Yes, it's been one year to the day since Aljamain Sterling won the UFC bantamweight championship in what was the most controversial UFC title win of all time. Next month, the two will finally have a rematch at UFC 273 to settle this unfinished business. Until then, you can check out our coverage of the "knee heard round the world" immediately after it happened in the article below.
The following article is presented to you in its original, unaltered form, courtesy of The MMA News Archives.
On This Day in MMA History...
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 6, 2021, 11:08 PM CT]
Petr Yan vs. Aljamain Sterling didn’t disappoint.
The two fighters met in a bantamweight title bout on Saturday night (March 6, 2021) at the UFC 259 event from Las Vegas, Nevada at the UFC Apex facility.
The first round saw Sterling come out aggressive and even caught him with a flying knee strike. This apparently woke up Yan, who scored a few takedowns and even knocked him down with a right hand. Sterling appeared to be rushing his movement as he was tripping and slipping. It was a wild pace early as Sterling was constantly in his face.
Sterling started to slow down in the third round as Yan continued to take over. Yan shut down Sterling’s clinch and takedown attempts but gave him solid competition on the feet if not out striking. Yan started to pick him apart with his sniper-like strikes in the fourth round. Sterling had one knee down and Yan landed a huge knee strike to the face of Sterling. The referee told Yan that Sterling was down before the strike was thrown. Thus, Sterling couldn’t continue, the referee called it a DQ and Sterling won the fight as well as the belt.
Peep the highlights of the fight courtesy of the UFC’s official Twitter account:
Sterling entered this fight on a five-fight winning streak and won his last seven out of eight bouts. The winning streak, including decision wins over the likes of Brett Johns, Jimmie Rivera, and Pedro Munoz while he tapped out Cody Stamann, and choked out Cory Sandhagen at the UFC 250 pay-per-view event.
Yan won the vacant bantamweight title when he scored a TKO win over Jose Aldo at the UFC 251 pay-per-view event. Yan entered this fight on a 9-fight winning streak with his previous three fights seeing him beat Urijah Faber by KO at the UFC 245 pay-per-view event, John Dodson by decision at the UFC on ESPN+ 3 from the O2 Arena in Prague, Czech Republic and Jimmie Rivera at the UFC 238 pay-per-view event from the United Center in Chicago, Illinois on June 8, 2019.
MMA News is providing ongoing coverage of UFC 259. We’ve got you covered with live results, video highlights, and post-fight tidbits.