Aljamain Sterling says his views on UFC pay are often presented without the context behind them. During his appearance on the PowerfulJRE podcast, Sterling told Joe Rogan that media outlets regularly ask questions designed to produce attention-grabbing clips, particularly when the subject turns to compensation.
“They’ll go from figh ter pay and I’ve been in the headlines for figh ter pay many times. Many many times,” Sterling said.
Rogan agreed, saying, “It’s a legitimate argument.”
Sterling acknowledged that athlete pay is a serious issue, but argued that his comments are treated differently because of his straightforward style.
“It is. But for some reason when I when I talk about it, and maybe because I’m not the crazy guy like Sean Strickland. Because Strickland has talked about it and he’s always been… he’s known as the crazy guy,” he said. “But when he talks about it, he makes it a very logical understanding bit where I go, how come he’s not getting Maybe he is, maybe I just don’t know because I don’t ask, but I’m like, for some reason, what I say is I feel like I’m a little bit more scrutinized.”
Sterling’s earlier public comments show that his position has not been as simple as opposing the UFC or demanding identical pay for every athlete.
In a May 2015 post, he wrote: “One valid point he made was the tix sale, but still, for figh ter pay, at the highest level of your sport, u shudnt need to work another job.”
Sterling later pushed back against the idea that his comments on figh ter pay were based purely on speculation. In another post in 2022, he disclosed $400,000 purse and wrote, “This is literally public information 💪 why is everyone acting like this is new? People are so strange.”
A decade later, Sterling took a more measured approach when discussing championship compensation. In August 2025, he tweeted: “I don’t think we have enough inside to make an educated opinion on this. But I do think for the lightweights, it could be better for the champions pay rate. I’d rather not get into all the nitty-gritty of figh ter pay again.”
That change in tone reflects the position he described on Rogan’s podcast. Sterling is willing to question how figh ters are compensated, but he also recognizes that outsiders do not have access to every detail of individual contracts, bonuses, sponsorship arrangements or promotional revenue.
His comments were prompted in part by comparisons between UFC athletes and boxers receiving much larger purses. Sterling said he was trying to understand how the financial figures were reached, rather than simply criticizing another athlete’s success.
