Aljamain Sterling hopes to fight Movsar Evloev before the end of the year following UFC 307 withdrawal: "This is a short delay"
Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling has pulled out of his featherweight battle with Movsar Evloev at UFC 307 set for Oct. 5. In a video released across his social media platforms, 'Funkmaster' sadly announced that an injury in training forced him out of his bout Salt Lake City.
Sterling moved to featherweight after losing his UFC bantamweight title to Sean O'Malley in August last year. He made his debut at 145 pounds at UFC 300 in April this year, beating Calvin Kattar via unanimous decision. His bout with Evloev would have been his second stint at UFC featherweight.
Meanwhile, announcing his withdrawal from UFC 307, 'Funkmaster' put out a video, accompanied by a caption that read:
"I believe God has a plan and is protecting me to give my best for @MovsarUFC. I need all my tools for an opponent like Movsar and hopefully he’s willing to fight me when I’m healed up. Thank you to the @UFC medical team for looking out for my health and protecting me from myself. This is a short delay and we will fight before the end of the year! "
Check out the video of Aljamain Sterling explaining the situation on X :
In the video, Sterling mentioned using stem cells and rehabing with the UFC PI team to fix the injury but to no avail. He then had a message for Evloev:
"So, Movsar [Evloev], if you still really wanna punch this handsome face, I put the challenge out to you to push the fight back and wait. Wait for Daddy. That's pretty much all I got. So Movsar, if you really wanna get it in, let's wait 'til December."
A closer look at the injury Aljamain Sterling suffered while sparring
In a longer version of the announcement uploaded on YouTube, 'Funkmaster' showed the moment he suffered the injury during a sparring session in the gym. While inside his sparring partner's close guard, Sterling was caught in a Kimura lock which he was largely defending by keeping his arm straight.
Though it's a viable defense to keep his arm from getting twisted, it wasn't enough to get him out of harm's way completely. The sparring partner kept on cranking the arm slowly over Sterling's head, eventually causing the former champion to shout, presumably out of pain.
We didn't see a visible break happen on the arm, which explains why it didn't need surgery as Aljamain Sterling said. Our closest guess is that the elbow may have popped a little bit. We couldn't hear the audio so much but this is our closest assessment of what happened. Here's to hoping he recovers smoothly.
Check out Aljamain Sterling suffering the injury below (0:22):