The UFC is closing in on a big time bantamweight title fight for one of their March PPVs. Aljamain Sterling (22-3) announced on his podcast that he would be defending his title against former champion Henry Cejudo (16-2) next.
The champ said that the UFC is targeting March for their title fight. Now, there are two PPVs expected for March. One of those is UFC 285 on March 5th which is expected to be headlined by Jon Jones taking on Francis Ngannou for the heavyweight title.
UFC 286 will take place a couple of weeks later and is expected to go down in the UK. While nothing is official that card will be headlined by the trilogy fight between Leon Edwards and Kamaru Usman. My money is that Sterling – Cejudo would happen in Las Vegas on March 5th.
For Sterling, he will be searching for his third successful title defense. In his first title defense, he took on former champ Petr Yan and edged him out by split decision. Most recently he defended against TJ Dillashaw in Abu Dhabi. Little did anyone know that Dillashaw had a serious shoulder injury heading into the bout.
Sterling is the UFC champion and he deserves to be called that. However, his entire title reign has been bizarre and nothing has seemingly been clean about it. A clean win over Henry Cejudo will really shut the haters up.
UFC’s Triple C Returns
Back in 2020, Henry Cejudo walked away from the UFC. He had become the UFC’s flyweight and bantamweight champion. He’s a former Gold Medalist in the Olympics. He had accomplished everything he wanted to and for him, he wasn’t getting paid enough to stick around.
However, at his core, Henry Cejudo is a competitor. After taking a few years off, he’s ready to jump back in. The ultimate goal is to chase down the featherweight title so he can be called “C4”, however, his first priority is getting back the bantamweight title.
Cejudo is going to be a massive challenge for Sterling given Cejudo’s wrestling ability, striking, and overall Fight IQ. This should be a tremendous fight whenever it’s finalized and takes place.