UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling is pumping the breaks on reports suggesting he has a fight with TJ Dillashaw booked and official.
Aljamain Sterling calls pause on TJ Dillashaw fight reports
This week it was reported that Sterling signed on to make his first title defense against former division champion TJ Dillashaw.
However, taking to his YouTube channel, Sterling claims that isn’t the case. Sterling notes no fight has been made official yet, as no contract has been signed.
Sterling is speaking out. In revealing that he received a payment of $400,000 to defend his title against Yan, “The Funkmaster” indicated that his pay-per-view (PPV) revenue was not included in his compensation for the match.
It sounds like the UFC champion is still negotiating a new deal with the Las Vegas-based mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion, as he claims he hasn’t received a standard bump for his next fight.
“News has broke that I’m going to be fighting TJ Dillashaw,” Sterling said. “AKA, the King Of Pills. AKA, the Pills of No Skills – possibly for September. But the one thing I wanted to disclose is, there’s no fight until there’s ink on paper.
“And as of right now, my contract is exactly the same. Usually, when there’s not a title fight, when you win a fight there’s an escalator. There hasn’t been an escalator in this fight. .
“I like to think that I played my part, did the ring things – even allowed myself to be the bad guy in the last outing with Petr Yan. And I helped play up the storyline.
“So one would think that, being a company man would actually help you in the long run. So I did my job, as of right now, I’m training, hoping that we come to some type of agreement to give some type of pay bump, which naturally happens in all the contracts.”
As for the fight with Dillashaw, Sterling doubled down that neither himself, nor his management have spoken to anybody about fighting Dillashaw. Before anything is made official, Sterling wants to make sure his money is in order.
“I haven’t talked to nobody. As far as I know, my management hasn’t talked to anyone. So we need to get those details figured out first.”
