Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling may be climbing the ladder as a featherweight now, but his old strap returned to his camp this past September when Sterling’s longtime friend and teammate Merab Dvalishvili captured the belt off Sean O’Malley.
The dynamic duo are fixtures in each other’s fight camps, which remained true for Dvalishvili’s crowning moment at UFC 306. Dvalishvili’s first title defense is yet to be set and several options interest “The Machine.” Among that group is the UFC’s No. 2-ranked bantamweight contender, the undefeated 18-0 Umar Nurmagomedov, who has the best case in the minds of many after defeating Cory Sandhagen in a rout this past August.
As impressive as Nurmagomedov has been thus far, he still shoulders criticism from his peers for how quickly he’s entered the title picture. Speculation surfaced shortly after Dvalishvili’s win that the promotion wanted to set up his first title defense for December, which turned into a rumored Nurmagomedov vs. Song Yadong matchup that also isn’t happening.
Dvalishvili is taking his time until early 2025, and the former champion Sterling has advised his teammate to tread carefully in the championship waters.
“I’m not saying [Nurmagomedov is] not good,” Sterling said on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “I love Umar. I think Umar’s a great guy, but the facts are the facts. I don’t care what your cousin (Khabib Nurmagomedov) has done. That does not have any bearing on what you’ve done for the sport. You’ve got to cut your teeth in this game. Not riding the coattails of your family’s merit.
“I told [Dvalishvili], ‘Bro, you’ve seen what happened to me. If there’s anything you’ve learned from that and anything I can offer you in terms of advice, is the fans don’t get it. But we as athletes get it. We need time to mentally want to fight. You want to heal. You need time to get ready for the next training camp. And he just won the belt. Take your victory lap like any champ should and like pretty much any champ gets to. I hope [he holds his ground]. He told me he has.
“Look how many top-10, top-five guys he had to fight to get here,” Sterling added of Dvalishvili. “… He rattled off how many wins? How many former champs? How many title challengers did he beat? And the guy they want him to fight beat one guy.”
Dvalishvili vs. Nurmagomedov from a stylistic standpoint is as compelling as it gets between high-level MMA grapplers. Both have been unmatched on the mat.
A strong grappler in his own right, Sterling feels the aid he and Dvalishvili provide each other helps immensely ahead of their upcoming battles. “Funk Master” believes the pacing for a would-be Dvalishvili vs. Nurmagomedov clash is better without the shorter December turnaround.
“I think it’s a very competitive fight,” Sterling said. “With Merab helping me for my camp with Movsar (Evloev for UFC 310), I think it’s also helping him. We’ve gone over a lot of situations from back control, side control, mount, just different things that he could try and he’s making my training and sparring sessions that much harder, which is very annoying because I have to work that much harder and I get more fatigued.”
Neither Sterling nor Dvalishvili hid their feelings about their shared title fight rival in O’Malley. After Sterling’s second-round knockout loss to O’Malley in 2023, he was hopeful a rematch awaited him. Ultimately, the promotion had other plans and gave that shot to Marlon “Chito” Vera, who suffered a unanimous decision loss in O’Malley’s lone title defense. While many believed that fight should have been Dvalishvili’s if not Sterling’s immediate rematch, Dvalishvili was unavoidable afterward.
O’Malley remains Sterling’s only loss since 2017, and as happy as the former champion was to see O’Malley drop his belt — and to Dvalishvili no less — he wishes he could have done the honors.
“I think he got off on the easy way with Merab. I think it could have been and should have been a lot worse,” Sterling said.
“I watched the fight back. He’s crazy [for thinking he won]. You can give him one round — round five. And you can maybe give him round three or four. I forget which one exactly. It wasn’t like Merab blew him out of the water, but when you’re watching in real-time, you know who’s winning, and this guy’s clearly not winning.
“It was bittersweet because I would have liked to have shown that exposure of him, but to have one of my really good friends do that, that was the sweet part for him to realize a dream,” Sterling concluded. “So I was super happy.”
Like Sterling, O’Malley has also been vocal about wanting an immediate title rematch post-defeat. That remains uncertain with Nurmagomedov in the mix, but Sterling doesn’t expect O’Malley’s path back to gold to be smooth.
“What’re they going to do, give him another unranked opponent and let him fight for the title next?” Sterling said. “I think there’s too many good guys. O’Malley is very talented. He’s very good at what he does. If they’re smart, and I think if he’s smart, they only accept the fights that will give him the stylistic edge, where he can use his range, use his feints. We just all know his one weakness is the grappling. Some people will never really close the gap in that area.”
Sterling finally pulled the trigger on his own move to featherweight in April against Calvin Kattar at UFC 300. The New York native had been an active champion at 135 pounds and admitted that the stresses of injuries and pressures were overwhelming ahead of Sterling’s O’Malley fight. A break was needed to help him miss MMA a little bit.
It wasn’t the most exciting performance against Kattar, but it got the job done. Sterling won via unanimous decision and jumped into the thick of 145-pound title contention. Had a bad loss occurred, that likely would’ve been it for his career as a competitor.
“I was nervous,” Sterling said. “That was such an important fight to me, where it was like if I can’t even compete, not even close, then I’m probably going to be done.
“I made enough money. The money’s not the motivator. The motivation was the money, of course, but also to be the best. If I have no clear path of showing that I can be the best, then it’s like, what am I even hanging around for?
“This is literally the end of my career on the line,” he continued. “I’m literally walking the plank and staring over the edge with my hands tied behind my back. Sink or swim. It’s either I’m going to be able to do what I say can do and all the things I’ve been doing in training. Or not and I’ll just move on to the next chapter of my life.”
For Sterling’s sophomore appearance at 145 pounds, he’ll look to become the first man to defeat Evloev in 19 attempts when they meet on Dec. 7 at UFC 310.
The clash was supposed to come sooner as they were booked for UFC 308 in October, however Sterling suffered a partial elbow tear in training.
Online banter has been abundant between the contenders, including accusations of performance-enhancing drug use. Sterling doesn’t flat-out want to claim his Russian opponent is fighting dirty, but he says he has fought athletes who have done so before and has no reservations about it.
“Respectfully, people from that region, it’s different,” Sterling said.
“He could say the same thing about me, but I also know I don’t have the luxury or financial backing — now I do — but back then to pay for stuff like that. My body looks exactly the same as it did when I was 21 years old. Nothing’s changed.
“You’ve heard Bobby [King] Green talk about the guys over there overseas, their training,” he added. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire. There’s a lot of guys who go over there and they come back with stories. It’s like, well, are all these guys talking out their ass? So, I have speculation that yeah, maybe he’s on some sh*t. Maybe he’s not anymore, I don’t know. Either way, I’m going to show up and fight him and see who’s better. I still think I’m a better fighter than him regardless.”
While a featherweight title shot may not be his next move, depending on the performance, Sterling expects to be right in the conversation with a win over Evloev as he heads into 2025.
