Seven fights prior to UFC 310’s main event Saturday night, closer to the bottom of the card than the top, is an awfully interesting encounter.
Aljamain Sterling, the former bantamweight champion whose only loss in his last 11 fights was to Sean O’Malley while attempting to defend his belt a fourth time, is facing Movsar Evloev, an undefeated featherweight prospect currently ranked fifth in the division and coming off victories against name brand 145er’s Diego Lopes and Arnold Allen.
That fight’s good enough to headline a Fight Night event and far more relevant than the two following it to wrap up UFC 310’s preliminaries — a matchup between unranked welterweights Vicente Luque and Themba Gorimbo, and a clash between veteran light heavyweight gatekeeper Anthony Smith and Dominick Reyes, who have each lost four of their last six.
That’s to say nothing of the main card which kicks off with an undeniably fun yet divisionally inconsequential clash between unranked featherweights Nate Landwehr and Doo Ho Choi, followed by a bizarre matchup of two seldom active featherweights coming off losses, Bryce Mitchell and Kron Gracie. Then it’s a heavyweight rematch between Alexander Volkov and Cyril Gane booked to keep both fighters busy while Jon Jones and Tom Aspinall sort out what’s happening atop the division.
At worst, the Sterling vs. Evloev fight ought to be the featured preliminary bout. And it’s impossible to argue that either of the Landwehr-Choi or Mitchell-Gracie fights are more meaningful to the featherweight division. So, what on earth is this fight doing so far down the card?
Does it have anything to do with Sterling’s strained relationship with UFC President Dana White, who said the 35-year-old was “one of those guys who can’t get out of his own way” while he was champion in 2023? Is it due to the lack of excitement produced by Evloev’s grappling-heavy style, which has led to decision victories in all eight of his UFC fights?
Could Sterling’s own wrestling tendencies and the decisions in half his professional fights also play a role? Or the fact these two have received only two bonuses in 24 combined UFC appearances? Is, as Sterling put it, “UFC gonna do what they do?”
Could be. It’s no secret that the company gives preference to exciting fighters that take risks in pursuit of highlight reel finishes over tactical ones that strategically avoid damage and look to secure victories on scorecards. As is the promotion’s right. It’s an entertainment product after all.
And it’s no secret that there’s no love lost between Sterling and White, who have traded public barbs repeatedly. Sterling has accused White and UFC of favouritism towards O’Malley. White has criticized Sterling for refusing to fight his teammate and current bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili.
White’s also said Sterling sabotages his own popularity with the way he carries himself and communicates in interviews. Sterling has countered that the UFC purposefully seeks to vilify him, showing a lack of support and respect for his willingness to be an active champion.
It’s been messy, no doubt. And while it feels like Evloev is an innocent bystander dragged into the fray, White has offered unfavourable reviews of him, too. After Evloev defeated Allen by unanimous decision in a technical bout at UFC 297 in January, White said, “that fight sucked the wind right out of the arena tonight. It might bum [Evloev] out, but he’s got to deal with it. That was the least fun fight anybody’s ever seen. He doesn’t have much to complain about. You know who lost that fight? The fans.”
So, while there hasn’t been an official, on-the-record rationale provided for this fight’s placement on Saturday, Occam’s razor is pointing rather directly towards the UFC doing, to borrow from Sterling, what they do.
“I didn’t know if I should have been insulted by the placement on the fight card or glass half-full,” Sterling said recently on his YouTube channel. “I was a little confused by it, of course. I guess they have their rhyme or reason for what they do, the UFC brass. It is what it is. At the end of the day, it’s not my organization. I don’t call the shots. I just go out there and compete.”
Such is prize fighting under a matchmaker model run by a profit-driven private company seeking to make its product as compelling as possible ahead of renegotiating its broadcast rights in the new year. It would be naïve to expect circumstances to be any other way. And it would be foolish to not grab a seat two fights into Saturday’s prelims to watch a pair of UFC’s best featherweights get after it in what’s as close to a title eliminator as the division currently has booked.
“It’s up to me to go out there and prove these guys wrong,” Sterling said. “I think people are going to be in for a very big surprise. And the UFC is going to realize, ‘We messed up big time by not putting this on the main card.’”
For Sterling, it will be his second fight at 145 pounds after moving up following the O’Malley loss. Part of what made him so dominant at bantamweight was Sterling’s sheer size, as he often cut upwards of 30 pounds to make weight. That gave him a reach advantage on most of his opponents, which helped his high-volume kickboxing work effectively from distance, and a massive grappling benefit on the mat that he gladly utilized whenever a fight ended up there.
The defining image of Sterling as a fighter is him backpacking an opponent, working for underhooks while simultaneously sinking a body lock, meticulously forcing them to the ground, and flattening their limbs out once there. He’s one of MMA’s better athletes at combining wrestling and jiu-jitsu — Sterling’s a black belt — which is how he managed to sink only the second Suloev Stretch in UFC history on Cody Stamann.
Yet Evloev ought to present Sterling’s stiffest challenge on the mat yet. He’s landed the second-most takedowns in UFC featherweight history; he’s averaged over five minutes of control time through his first eight UFC fights; and he’s done that while out-striking six of his eight opponents.
A busy, volume-jabbing approach on the feet that sets up well-timed takedowns and heavy control on the ground is a very difficult and taxing skillset to defend against. That Evloev has such a deep gas tank powering that style is what’s helped him wear down and frustrate foes. He, too, can transition quickly to the back, and his sambo background has loaded him with an array of counters and escapes when threatened with submission attempts.
As with most grappling specialists, Evloev still has questions to answer in the stand-up. But even while eating the odd strike in prior fights, Evloev’s looked calm and comfortable in exchanges, utilizing his quickness and athleticism to evade more punishing shots and find entry opportunities as his opponents try to mount attacks.
It all sets up a fascinating tactical clash in a top-of-the-division matchup with a direct path to a title shot at stake. Will Sterling and Evloev put on a proficient, back-and-forth grappling display full of traps, submission threats, and reversals? Will Sterling’s size or Evloev’s cardio give one of them an edge? Will their grappling abilities cancel each other out and force the two into an unlikely striking match?
You’ll have to tune in early on Saturday to find out. But if you appreciate strategy and technique, you won’t regret that you did.
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