Bantamweights ready to do battle
Path to UFC title shot not clear for either winner
It’s basically impossible to look at Saturday night’s UFC main event between Marlon Moraes and Cory Sandhagen and not think about Aljamain Sterling.
A fight between Moraes, the No. 1 contender in the UFC’S bantamweight division, and Sandhagen, the No. 4- ranked guy, is exciting in and of itself. They’re two of the most dynamic 135- pound mixed martial artists in the world, and their matchup is a compelling one.
But around the MMA world, there seems to be a real worry that the winner might leapfrog Sterling in the lineup for the next shot at bantamweight champion Petr Yan.
When Sterling beat Sandhagen earlier this year, it seemed like a given that he was next in line. The New Yorker has won five in a row since getting knocked out by Moraes in 2017, and after nearly six years in the UFC, he’s done the work.
And yet, the UFC has seemed a little resistant to giving Sterling a shot. It’s conceivable that an impressive win for Moraes might be enough to push him to the front of the line. His last fight was a win over Jose Aldo, after all, and somehow that result earned Aldo a title shot.
“I knew I needed another fight after the fight with Aldo. It was a close fight and I’d just fought for the title,” Moraes told reporters in Abu Dhabi this week. “People want to see someone get in there ( and make) a statement. That was a good fight against a legend, but it wasn’t a statement.”
Moraes is one of the good guys in the fight game and his openness about understanding why he didn’t get a title shot after beating Aldo is refreshing. If he gets to fight Yan next, that’s not exactly something anybody should be upset about.
He’s going to have to do better than Sterling did against Sandhagen, though, and that’ll be tough. It took Sterling all of 88 seconds to dispatch of the up-and-comer back in June, and it was a performance that had anybody with any intelligent understanding of MMA calling for Sterling to fight for gold.
If Moraes can somehow do better than that, then at least fans will see something special on Saturday.
The happy ending in all of this, though, would be for Sterling to get the opportunity he deserves and for the winner of Saturday night’s main event to wait a couple months and be next in line.
NEVER RULE IT OUT
In an interview with TSN’S Aaron Bronsteter this week, Canadian MMA l egend Georges St. Pierre gave a glimpse into where his head is at with regards to a potential return to the octagon.
St. Pierre hasn’t fought since beating Michael Bisping for the middleweight title in 2017 and at 39 years old a comeback feels increasingly unlikely.
“In order to come back, I’m in the mental state where I’m not sure,” St. Pierre told TSN. “I would need to put me back in a different warrior mode, ’cause when I fight, my brain doesn’t function the same way than when I’m in normal life. Maybe it’s because of my obsessive compulsive thing that I’m so focused on it like nothing else matters. I’m only focus on one thing and it’s to win and what I need to do to win.
“I need to achieve it and do it all costs. I need to rewire myself if I get to fight again.”
A fight between St. Pierre and lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has been rumoured for years and both men have been public about wanting to make it happen. The UFC hasn’t shown much interest, though, and it just seems more unlikely by the day that we’ll ever see GSP competing again.
IT’S ON, APPARENTLY
It looks like Conor McGregor will be returning to the octagon for a rematch with Dustin Poirier.
The two lightweights had publicly agreed to a charity match on Twitter a couple weeks ago and they both took to social media this week to say they were accepting a UFC- sanctioned fight.
There’s one caveat , though. Mcgregor is demanding the fight happen before the end of the year.
“Hello Dustin! I accepted the ( UFC) offer to fight you, but told them it must happen in 2020,” Mcgregor wrote. “I’m ready for Nov. 21, given that (card’s) recent injury issues, as well as any of the December dates, the 12th and the 19th. I’ ll also still donate $ 500k to The Good Fight Foundation.”
Mcgregor made quick work of Poirier when they first fought back in 2014. In many ways, that fight was the catalyst that launched Mcgregor to superstardom.
Poirier, meanwhile, rebounded after the fight and has spent the past half- decade establishing himself as a perennial lightweight contender and one of the most popular fighters in the sport among hard-cores.