Just days out from his UFC 280 co-main event clash with TJ Dillashaw, bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling found himself in a war of words with Twitter users after ‘Funk Master’ posted images of himself with controversial kickboxer Andrew Tate.
Tate is known for his misogynistic views on various social media platforms, though he has found himself banned from many of the most popular platforms including Twitter which issued a permanent ban after Tate stated that women who are victims of sexual assault “bare some responsibility.”
Many fans called out Aljamain Sterling for associating with such a deplorable human being online leading ‘Funk Master’ to begin responding to fans on Twitter, trying to justify Tate’s disgusting words.
Given the opportunity to further explain his stance on the matter at the UFC 280 media event, Aljamain Sterling attempted to clarify his responses on Twitter to make it clear that he was not condoning Andrew Tate’s victim-blaming response to the ‘Me Too’ movement.
“I have 14-plus sisters,” Sterling said at UFC 280 Media Day. “I love my mom. I would never tell my mom that if anything like that happened to them that, ‘It’s your fault.’ That’s just the craziest thing to ever say to anybody.
“That’s like, if you’re in the hood, and you’re walking down a nice neighborhood or something, and you’re a person of color, and you get shot because you have a hoodie on, that I’m telling you it’s your fault because you’re walking down the street. That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would I ever blame the victim? No, it’s the person that’s not taking the time to understand.”
Aljamain Sterling Believes People Are Too Quick to Pass Judgement
Unfortunately, Aljamain Sterling opted to continue talking, speaking on how the world is “quick to condemn people” rather than being open to other perspectives. While on one hand, you can certainly see Sterling’s point regarding a society that is quick to ‘cancel’ people for their indiscretions. However, there are specific actions where the only acceptable response is condemnation, and Andrew Tate’s repeated hate-filled rants toward women are deserving of that treatment.
“The clarity on that is I never victim-blamed anybody,” Sterling continued. “I think that’s the craziest thing to even make an assumption like that and if you don’t understand what I said, ask me to clarify, don’t start jumping the gun and start throwing labels and sh*t like that.
“I think people are really crazy and I think that’s the problem with the world today. We are so quick to condemn people instead of actually giving people a chance to reason and analyze what people are saying versus assuming and just making a judgment and being completely wrong. That’s just the world that we live in today. I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon. With that said, hopefully T.J. Dillashaw moves the needle this weekend at UFC 280.”