UFC 300 was supposed to feature the most “insane” lineup of the year.
But some of the promotion’s must-see fights, like Dustin Poirier vs. Benoit Saint-Denis and Gilbert Burns vs. Jack Della Maddalena, instead went to the UFC 299 fight card in Miami. Perhaps the promotion was trying to stack the deck in “The Sunshine State” to trick MMA fans into believing Sean O’Malley is a pay-per-view (PPV) draw after this recent dud.
“In terms of styles, it’s still a good fight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to watch [UFC 299]. It’s just kind of funny that UFC felt the need to stack this card so much to make it feel like Sean is the draw,” former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling told The MMA Hour. “It’s actually comical, because I know people were kind of trying to s**t on the [UFC] 300 [card]. I’m like, well, a lot of those fights that people probably would’ve wanted [for UFC 300] were on 299, for whatever reason. It doesn’t take much to kind of draw conclusions — [if] you want to build somebody up, you build [them] up and you bring the other eyeballs with all these other people.”
O’Malley stopped Sterling atop the UFC 292 card last Aug. in Boston and will make his first 135-pound title defense against longtime rival Marlon Vera. “Chito” is the last fighter to defeat O’Malley, finishing “Suga” at UFC 252 in summer 2020. As for Sterling, he’ll bump up to the featherweight class to throw hands with “Beantown” bruiser Calvin Kattar at UFC 300.
To see the rest of the UFC 299 and UFC 300 fight cards click here and here.