Aljamain Sterling shares how he didn’t get ‘lost’ fighting all-time great: ‘I had to tell myself…’

Aljamain Sterling’s mentality towards Henry Cejudo: ‘He won that medal in like 1999…’

Prior to his 2023 return, Cejudo had never been taken down in his UFC career.

Sterling took down the Olympic gold medalist three times in their title fight, impressing many with his wrestling capabilities. Sterling defended 11 out of 15 takedown attempts from Cejudo across 25 minutes before he was awarded the decision.

“You went into that fight, outwrestled the champ,” Kamaru Usman told Sterling on the Pound 4 Pound Podcast.

“Yeah. Because it’s just different,” Sterling responded.

“It’s a fight. It’s not a wrestling match,” Sterling continued.

“A lot of people were counting me out because of my accolades stacked against Henry’s. And I’m like, yeah, it’s very impressive, but we gotta keep a couple of factors in mind.

“And this is what I had to tell myself as well, so I didn’t get lost in the shuffle of, ‘oh, man, you’re fighting Henry, dog…’

“You’re fighting the 5’4″ giant,” Cejudo said to his former rival.

“No, but for real, it was like that,” Sterling admitted.

“But I had to remind myself. I was like, yeah, he’s an Olympic medalist… but he won that medal in, like, 1999,” Sterling joked as Cejudo won his Olympic gold medal in 2008.

“So, I was like, keep that s—, keep it in perspective, man. And that was a long a– time ago,” Sterling said of how he psyched himself out for Cejudo.

“I was like, what’s his best move? Inside trip. What he gonna do after he do that? I was like, nothing… I was like, alright, good, so you’re good. A couple of little things that I had to keep in mind.

“As long as I have respect for his abilities, but also remembering why I’m in this position to begin with. I didn’t get there by accident,” the former bantamweight champion stated.

“I mean, you could say the whole illegal knee or whatever, but my resume before the illegal knee happened, I think, was probably one of the best runs before someone got to a title shot opportunity other than anyone named Merab [Dvalishvili] in bantamweight history,” Sterling mentioned his teammate.

Aljamain Sterling has now made it to the top 5 of two divisions

At 36, Sterling is still chasing his dream of becoming a two-division champion.

Sterling left the bantamweight division in 2023 after losing his title to Sean O’Malley a few months after he defended it against Cejudo.

Sterling didn’t technically weigh in at featherweight for his fight against Brian Ortega, because their featherweight booking moved to lightweight at the last minute.

After weighing in at 153 lbs, Sterling defeated Ortega via unanimous decision in the five-round co-main event of UFC Shanghai.

While the fight wasn’t at 145 lbs, through to no fault of his own, Sterling still moved up the featherweight rankings where he is now in the top five of a UFC weight division once again.