Aljamain Sterling earns tight cut up resolution over Henry Cejudo to retain UFC title
Struggle evening in New Jersey belongs to Lengthy Island.
Aljamain Sterling eked out a decent cut up resolution victory over former two-division champion Henry Cejudo at UFC 288 in Newark, setting a brand new document for consecutive UFC bantamweight title defenses together with his third.
Sterling, a former two-time All-American wrestler at SUNY Cortland, and 2008 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle Henry Cejudo examined one another’s grappling chops all through, with every discovering success within the takedown division however Sterling attending to reasonably extra threatening positions.
Kicks performed an enormous half in Sterling’s standup offense — as they usually do — with the champion working the legs and physique. Cejudo, who has eight knockouts on his ledger, had bother touchdown the large punch he was trying to arrange all through.
“He’s a gamer,” Cejudo stated of Sterling. “It was shut, however Aljamain did his job, acquired the victory.”
After the battle, prime contender Sean O’Malley was introduced into the octagon for what grew to become a testy, expletive-laden faceoff tn entrance of 17,559 at sold-out Prudential Heart.
Earlier within the evening, Sterling’s Longo and Weidman MMA teammate Matt Frevola thrilled the Newark crowd with a first-round TKO of Drew Dober.
Frevola, whom Mets proprietor Steve Cohen got here to see, picked aside the hard-hitting veteran from the surface earlier than dropping Dober with a proper and ending him off with heavy arms on the mat.
The largest winners exterior the metropolitan space got here within the two bouts previous the championship battle. Belal Muhammad earned a convincing resolution victory over Gilbert Burns to arrange a probable future welterweight title shot in non-title, five-round motion.
Yan Xiaonan scored a first-round TKO of Jessica Andrade in an upset that paves the way in which for a possible all-China strawweight title battle towards champion Zhang Weili.