Aljamain Sterling has been one of the least popular champions in the UFC ever since he claimed he couldn’t go on after Petr Yan threw an illegal knee during their clash.
This resulted in Sterling being the only UFC champion to be absent from the P2P rankings.
But despite the silent treatment from the UFC, Sterling is till coming up with funny ways to diss Yan (who is currently ranked number 9 on this list).
One notable way is a comedic video Sterling recently shot with the help of his friends from Matt Serra’s academy depicting a scrapbook titled “MMA rules 4 dummies”.
Despite of Yan’s social media being in English, the former bantamweight champion does not appear to speak it. Which is perhaps why he was carried by his corner in making the decision to throw that fateful illegal knee.
The majority of MMA organizations follows the common rule of prohibiting knee strikes and kicks to the head of a grounded opponent (also referred to as soccer kicks), but fighters are allowed to strike their opponent’s body. Hand and elbows strikes to the head are considered legal.
Khalil Rountree recently had an interesting take on this limitation when he knocked out a downed opponent with a kick to the body.
Khalil Roundtree is no joke pic.twitter.com/SfC0BM1mWY
— Charlie Quinn (@CharlieQuinnMMA) March 13, 2022
Petr Yan is one of the highest profile Russians in the UFC. Yan is currently former UFC Bantamweight champion and current interim UFC bantamweight champion all thanks to the unfortunate knee he threw at Aljamain’s Sterling while picking him apart back in March of 2021.
The bout was meant to happen much sooner however Sterling underwent a neck surgery for an issue that has been bugging him since his college wrestling days and was unable to pass medical checks. The bout was also pushed back once again in January. It was initially scheduled for March 5th but it was pushed back for UFC 273 on April 9th.