While I am not usually a fan of fighters being disrespectful towards their opponents at weigh-ins and press conferences leading up to their fights it was kind of nice to see Henry Cejudo get into Sterling's head a little bit and things got heated.
It's difficult to tell what they are saying from most of the angles that that are provided from most of the clips that are available of this but mostly they are just interrupting one another and doing the usual pre-fight showdown shouting contest.
I feel as though this sort of thing is actually encouraged to a certain degree by UFC and even though Dana White and security are there to immediately separate anyone that gets into a scuffle it wouldn't surprise me if fighters are actually encouraged to do this in order to generate more hype than normal.
The lead-in to this fight has actually been pretty tame with both fighters being rather respectful to one another in interviews and honestly, I wonder if Dana or someone else in charge told them right before this that they need to introduce a bit more drama into the scene.
Cejudo initiates the physical contact and Sterling responds with a chest shove, so it is nothing major. The way in which everyone else involved kind of just moves on with the day says to me that they expect this, or maybe even arrange it. Whatever, it doesn't matter it was just exciting to see and the crowd kind of loved it. here is a clip of the entire segment if you want to hear Joe Rogan shouting for 3 minutes.
We are less than 24 hours from UFC 288 and just as always, I am excited for this one. I would love to see Cejudo KO Aljo but this is also an opportunity for Sterling to finally gain mine and many other people's respect if he can win or at least manage to keep the fight not boring. If Sterling takes the fight to the ground and simply works in a half-ass fashion towards ground control and submission, I think we can expect some booing from the crowd. I'll be booing at a screen.
Vegas doesn't know how to handle this matchup between Sterling and Cejudo since neither guy is favored for straight victory. At the time of me writing this Sterling is sitting at -105 and Cejudo is at -115. I can't recall any time in the past when basically nobody has any statistical information to call a favorite in a fight.
Something interesting in the Vegas lines is that almost no one believes that Sterling will win by KO/TKO as it sits at +1000 and even fewer people think that Cejudo can win by submission as betting on that is at a whopping +1600
Let's just hope both guys can keep this interesting.