Former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain ‘Funkmaster’ Sterling has revealed the full extent of the arm injury he received in his unanimous decision catchweight victory over Brian Ortega.
The fight drew boos from the crowd as due to its passive nature, with Sterling remaining mainly on his feet, despite being known for his wrestling style.
But after the fight Sterling revealed the huge spinning elbow he landed on Ortega’s chin forced him to change his fighting style for the rest of the bout.
“That last elbow I landed in round four, I really couldn’t even keep my arm up to defend myself,” Sterling said during the post-fight show.
“When he came after me, I was like, this is a living nightmare right now. Because I can’t even do anything other than circle, and hopefully he makes a mistake, which he did and allowed me to take his back and get him down.
“This for sure happened in the fight. It showed right away in the fifth round.”
The following morning Sterling described the full extent of his injury to his Instagram followers from his hotel room. His arm and elbow are swollen and he is unable to move and flex it properly, unusually calling the injury a ‘titty’.
“Good morning from Shanghai, this is from the spinning back elbow,” he says, showing his arm.
“As you can see I now have a titty on my elbow, because it looks like a titty.
“I can’t really bend my arm. That’s the furthest I can get it. It hurts.
“I’m going to get that checked out. It’s looks wild right. It looks nuts.”
Sterling’s caption on his Instagram post said: “Use the spinning stuff they said 😂 this might take a while to heal. It was hard to keep up activity after losing this weapon but I did my best to stay as offensive as I could, while trying to avoid the big shots from Brian.
“My arm was numb/dead, so that sucked. Tough scrap against a guy that’s never been finished other than a doctor stoppage. Happy we got the job done.”
After the win Sterling called for a featherweight title fight against Alexander Volkanovski. Although he is unlikely to step ahead of Lerone Murphy and Movsar Evloev, and a much-discussed fight with Arnold Allen looks more possible.
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