T.J. Dillashaw might have served his suspension, but Aljamain Sterling isn’t buying that the former UFC bantamweight champion is a changed man.
Dillashaw tested positive for EPO in 2019 and was subsequently handed a two-year suspension by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). He returned last July, beating former interim title challenger and top five bantamweight Cory Sandhagen in the UFC Vegas 32 main event.
Dillashaw might have won back some fans in that fight, but Sterling maintains The Ultimate Fighter 14 finalist is ‘still cheating’ and shouldn’t be let off the hook despite being given the all-clear by USADA.
‘The Funk Master’ put Dillashaw on blast during a recent appearance on The MMA Hour, with Sterling expected to defend his bantamweight title against Dillashaw in October.
“When he’s talking about all this stuff, I’m like, dude, you were on the same s*** that [Renan Barao] was on,” Sterling, who is on a seven-fight win streak with back-to-back wins over Petr Yan, told Ariel Helwani (h/t MMA Fighting). Whatever it was, even if it wasn’t the same exact thing, you were definitely on something,” Sterling said. “Your teammates outed you years ago. There’s been rumors, even before that press conference happened with him and Cody Garbrandt, there were rumors going on for the longest. But what am I going to do? Sit here and b**** and moan and say, ‘Oh, I hear he’s cheating, let me go snitch on him?’ Your people told on you. If that’s what you need to do to get by and feel better at night, I think there’s some type of issue there and he might be a little bit unconfident in his own skill set, that he feels the need to do something like that in order to get some type of edge.
“Isn’t it fascinating he got knocked out by Henry Cejudo with a toe? It wasn’t the shin, it wasn’t the foot — it was the toe that knocked him down and wobbled him the way that it did. And he came back and took those monster shots from Cory Sandhagen — hmm, I don’t know, my man. I don’t know. I know you can make the argument, ‘Oh, he cut too much weight, the brain fluids.’ Miss me with that s***. The guy’s still cheating. He’s still finding ways to cheat. Once a cheater, always a cheater. And it’s just going to be nice to beat a guy like that, get a nice feather in my cap, and to say that I did it the right way, and he’s a p****.”
UFC 280, which is expected to feature Sterling vs. Dillashaw as the co-main event, is scheduled to take place on Oct. 22 at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
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