The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday will touch down in New Jersey for the first time since 2019, and UFC 288 looks like a worthy pay-per-view card for The Garden State. Underappreciated bantamweight champions of the past and present collide in the main event. As part of a title reign that has been high on oddities and low on credit, Aljamain Sterling now defends his strap against former champion Henry Cejudo, who comes out of a three-year retirement for an immediate title shot. Beyond that, a late-notice addition between Belal Muhammad and Gilbert Burns could determine the next welterweight title challenger, and a showdown between Jessica Andrade and Xiaonan Yan should leave the winner in strong position in a wide-open women’s strawweight division. Featherweights open the show, and while Diego Lopes represents a downgrade as a late replacement for Bryce Mitchell, he should be down for a scrap against Movsar Evloev; and it will be interesting to see what Kron Gracie has to offer in 2023.
UFC Bantamweight Championship
#6 P4P | Aljamain Sterling (22-3, 14-3 UFC) vs. Henry Cejudo (16-2, 10-2 UFC)ODDS: Cejudo (-115), Sterling (-105)
When Sterling made his UFC debut back in 2014, it seemed inevitable that the Long Islander would reach championship-level success, but the strangeness of his path to get there has been quite unexpected. An electric grappler with a long frame for the division, “Funk Master” was curiously underpromoted as he racked up impressive wins on the undercard. Naturally, Sterling disappointed immediately when the UFC deciding to put its weight behind him, dropping frustrating decisions to Bryan Caraway and Raphael Assuncao. The concern was that Sterling’s kick-heavy striking game was both inefficient and disconnected from his wrestling, so it was nice to see him right the ship and synthesize things a bit more in wins over Augusto Mendes and Renan Barao. Then, Marlon Moraes obliterated him in just 67 seconds. It looked like Sterling’s window for contention might have officially closed, but he had one more leap to make in terms of progress. Wins over Jimmie Rivera and Pedro Munhoz in 2019 saw Sterling bust out an effective range striking game that worked efficiently and took advantage of his length, and while it did not flow perfectly into the best parts of his talent, he was still able to run Cory Sandhagen over for a quick submission to finally become the bantamweight division’s top contender. The situation then got weird. Sterling came into his title fight against Petr Yan with a gameplan that worked well up until the point that it did not. He pressured Yan with a pace and ferocity that eventually served to exhaust Sterling by the championship rounds. In the fourth round, Sterling shot for an unsuccessful takedown and was left catching his breath while on his knees, and Yan—for reasons that are still not entirely clear—decided to take his time and crush the Serra-Longo Fight Team rep with an unexpected illegal knee, leaving his challenger unable to continue. That handed Sterling the bantamweight title via disqualification. With it came the wrath of most of the mixed martial arts fandom, holding it against Sterling that he found himself as the perceived undeserved champion. It would be 13 months until Sterling finally returned for the rematch, with the narrative being that Yan would finally dismiss him and go back to his status as the clear undisputed top dog at 135 pounds. However, Sterling instead took advantage of some uncharacteristic aggression from Yan, riding out rounds while hunting for submissions and doing enough to earn a decision win to retain his title fair and square. With that ordeal finally behind him, things figured to get back to normal for Sterling’s next title defense against T.J. Dillashaw—a former champion and an interesting test. Instead, things may have gotten even stranger, as Dillashaw somehow made it to the cage with what has turned out to be a career-ending shoulder injury, dislocating it multiple times ahead of a one-sided Sterling win that was rendered rather pointless by the circumstances. Most fighters would just be able to move on and face their top contender, but even that cannot be simple for Sterling. His top challenger is friend and teammate Merab Dvalishvili, leaving the UFC to go in a completely different direction and pit Sterling against an unretired former champion in Cejudo.
Cejudo’s own path to championship glory felt strange at the time, even if now seems quaint compared to some of the turns that Sterling’s recent career has taken. Cejudo came to the UFC in 2014 as a promoter’s dream, a former Olympic gold medalist wrestler with an inspirational life story who also served as a path to break into the Mexican-American market. However, that all nearly got nixed before it started, as the weight-cutting issues that marked Cejudo’s regional career kept popping up and almost led to his release. Cejudo thankfully got his ducks in a row, marched his way to a flyweight title shot and—after losing a championship fight in one-sided fashion to Demetrious Johnson—was motivated to improve even more from there, putting things together enough to finally end the AMC Pankration star’s dominant reign over the division in 2018. It figured to be a breakthrough moment for Cejudo and a launchpad for the company to build him as one of its stars. Instead, the UFC seemed to take it as an opportunity to move on from Johnson and the flyweight division as a whole. The UFC basically cut every flyweight that lost a fight over the next few months. It kicked off 2019 with Dillashaw, then the bantamweight champion, moving down to 125 pounds to challenge Cejudo, even explicitly saying that the UFC would abolish the division once he won his second belt. Those plans never came to pass, as Cejudo knocked Dillashaw out in under a minute. That was somehow enough to save the division and set Cejudo up to challenge Dillashaw at 135 pounds for his own belt. However, their rematch was quickly scrapped once Dillashaw failed his post-fight drug test and was forced to vacate the title. Instead, it was Moraes who wound up challenging Cejudo for the vacant belt. In their confrontation, Cejudo impressively knew when to abandon a losing gameplan. After attempting to kickbox Moraes from range and getting nowhere, Cejudo simply bit down and charged forward while relying on his durability, earning a sudden comeback victory and double champ status. Between Cejudo’s mixed martial accomplishments and Olympic gold medal, he had—and still does—a case as one of the best combat sports athletes of all-time, which continued to make it odd that things fell so flat promotionally. Cejudo’s lone title defense saw him knock out Dominick Cruz as the best opponent available during the pandemic, and after he announced his retirement in his post-fight speech, the UFC moved on in record time towards matching Yan and Jose Aldo up for the newly vacant belt. Cejudo has spent the last few years teasing a comeback that finally happens now, and given how things have gone for both him and Sterling, no one knows what will come out of this fight.
Even beyond the narrative of neither man truly ever getting his due, this is a strange fight to break down just because of all the questions involved. Cejudo is obviously the more decorated wrestler and figures to have the advantage there, but that is also not a given. Cejudo is not particularly tested against bantamweights in their prime, let alone one of the best athletes in the division, and Sterling’s unorthodox array of grappling techniques could lead him to finding his challenger’s back and banking a lot of control time, if nothing else. Of course, there is also the question of what Cejudo looks like after three years off, particularly since going from 33 to 36 years old may not be particularly kind in terms of him staying at peak athleticism. Cejudo could make some hay even if this turns into a pure striking match, as he did an impressive job of cutting down Cruz’s legs. With that said, Sterling figures to be at a different level in terms of speed, and the wrestling could turn into a bit of a stalemate with the champion finding himself in the best positions to work for submissions. Given the layoff, it is hard to trust Cejudo, even if it would not be a shock if he came in close to peak form and just neutralized Sterling with his wrestling for more than half of this fight. The tenor of Sterling’s reign seems set up to have him both get the win and not get much credit in the process. The pick is that Sterling gets the decision in a close fight.
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Sterling vs. Cejudo
Burns vs. Muhammad
Andrade vs. Yan
Evloev vs. Lopes
Jourdain vs. Gracie
The Prelims