John McCarthy says that he has rewatched the second fight between Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling and believes that either one of them could have walked away with their hand raised.
‘Big’ John and Sterling had quite a run in after Sterling was deemed the champion after his win over Yan. Longtime legendary referee McCarthy, believed that Yan did enough to win the fight and thought the referees got it wrong. McCarthy had said that there was “no way in the world” that he should of had his hand raised when he first saw the fight. He still said that he believed ‘Aljo’ fought a fantastic fight, but Sterling still came at his neck for his comments.
Sterling wasn’t done doing his victory rounds on Twitter and decided to throw some shade McCarthy’s way for his comments. ‘Funkmaster’ was absolutely relentless and called McCarthy out for his “bad takes”.
“Theres absolutely no way to score round 1 for Sterling!”
•#GiveMeYourTears #AndStill #Undisputed #TheWeeklyScraps pic.twitter.com/Vbj8Jctr9F— Aljamain Sterling (@funkmasterMMA) April 15, 2022
You think I give a shit about someone not agreeing with me? You and josh are CONSTANTLY disrespectful to us fighters. That’s where you both annoy me. Especially Josh, as a former high level athlete
You wanna try to take the high road now? Please look in the mirror Mr Perfect https://t.co/whnwmIgkTz
— Aljamain Sterling (@funkmasterMMA) April 14, 2022
You think I give a shit about someone not agreeing with me? You and josh are CONSTANTLY disrespectful to us fighters. That’s where you both annoy me. Especially Josh, as a former high level athlete
John McCarthy has back tracked a bit on his earlier comments he had made about the first round of Sterling vs Yan 2
“I’ll be honest, I went back and watched the first round. I say this all the time… don’t sit there and talk to your friends and watch a fight and think that you judged it correctly. Cause I was talking to my friends and when I went back and watched it as a judge – it’s razor close – it can go either way. I can understand where someone looks at Aljo and gives the round to him and I can see where yes Yan won the round.” (Transcribed by BJPenn.com)
He credited the fact that he watched the fight in realtime with his friends and that’s something he isn’t going to do any longer. He explained that you can’t be in conversation, while believing you are truly judging the fight. He even said he loves watching Sterling fight and that he is one of the most exciting fighters in the sport.
At the end of the day, everyone has their own way of scoring fights and many people did have that fight scored for Yan. The fight was razor thin and could have gone either way like McCarthy said. Where he went wrong, was saying there was “no shot” that Sterling won the first round, but it seems as if he has made amends for those initial comments.