I am happy that this is the case. I don't like how he became champion and he is one of the most boring fighters in the UFC since his tactics tend to revolve around wrapping an opponent up and then just not letting go for 25 minutes.
I think Sterling was aware of this too and in an effort to boost his popularity I believe he went for a different approach in his failed title defense against Sean O'Malley at UFC 292. I gotta hand it to Sterling for altering his style to be a bit more exciting but by doing so he ended up getting KO'd in the process. To me, this kind of suggests that perhaps that only way he can remain on top in the division is going to be precisely by pursuing that boring grappling approach that got him there in the first place.
To me, this sport is more about entertainment that it is about just being undefeated. The fight purses reflect this as well. Much respect to Aljamain for altering his style to be more of a crowd pleaser but honestly, I am glad he is out of the picture at least for now.
I would be willing to bet that UFC is very excited about O'Malley winning as well because he is a bit of a crowd favorite and his antics sell tickets and PPV's a lot more than a boring champion who hugs and sniffs his opponents and wins with ground control time on the cards.
Now we need to look at the rest of the division to see what we can expect next. I don't know if Sterling had a rematch clause but I would bet that Dana White is going to be pushing for "Sugar" to face someone else rather than have Aljamain return and resume hugging for the win.
As is often the case, UFC hasn't yet updated their website and this is a source of a great amount of eye-rolling from me. They are by far the largest MMA organization in the world, make billions of dollars a year, and they can't get a few web guys hired on their team?
The next opponent for Sugar should be by all rights Merab Dvalishvili, who honestly should have been in the fight yesterday rather than Sean but Merab doesn't have the personality that the crowds are looking for and having him (boring) fight against an already-regarded-as-boring champion in Aljamain Sterling would have been a snooze-fest of a card that would have been tough for UFC to market.
In the co-main-event we saw Zhang Welei absolutely dismantle relative newcomer Amanda Lemos. The strike difference between these two was astounding as by the end Zhang had something like 300 strikes to Lemos' 25. Zhang is simply the real deal and she is a beast. I think it might be a while before she is dethroned and don't really know who she could fight. The last person she lost to was "Thug" Rose Namajunas and since then Rose's stock value has dropped a LOT when she had what was heavily regarded as the most boring fight to ever occur in modern-day combat sports. To make matters worse for Rose, instead of apologizing to the fans and promising to do better, she and her team doubled down defending their strategy and even accused fans of "not knowing the sport." She went from fan favorite to one of the most hated fighters in the game basically overnight because of this.
All in all UFC 292 was kind of just "ok." While the co main-events were exciting, the rest of the card was pretty "meh."
In the meantime I am glad that O'Malley is breathing new life into the Bantamweight division. It was desperately needed after the relatively 'ho hum" title reigns of both Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling.
Next up we have "The Korean Zombie" against a struggling Max Holloway on UFC Fight Night, which unfortunately for those of us in the States will take place at a silly time of day since the event takes place on the other side of the planet in Singapore.