Henry Cejudo, who won an Olympic wrestling medal, is going to fight Aljamain Sterling at UFC 288. Since he retired in 2020, this will be his first match back. Even though his long break could potentially cause problems, Cory Sandhagen still thinks that Cejudo can take the title again at 135 pounds.
Sandhagen believes that Cejudo will win the fight at UFC San Antonio. The reason is that Cejudo has wrestled for much of his life and so he knows how to stop Sterling from standing behind him. He also has lots of achievements in this kind of sport.
I’m guessing that Cejudo won’t try to tackle Aljamain, and it’ll be more of a kickboxing match with Aljamain getting hit by Cejudo many times. I think Cejudo will win in the end.
Cejudo was really good at bantamweight even before he took a 3-year break from fighting. During that time, he managed to beat Marlon Moraes and Dominick Cruz and become UFC champion twice.
Sterling has been winning all of his 8 most recent fights, and he has competed 4 times since Cejudo’s retirement. Sandhagen is worried about Cejudo because he isn’t used to taking time off and now he’ll be fighting for a title rather than someone else.
“It has been a while since Cejudo last competed and no one knows what he’s been doing during this time off. On the other hand, all of us who are still in competition are focusing on becoming champion or if it’s Sterling’s case, to remain champion. From what we can tell, it doesn’t look like Cejudo was thinking about that stuff for the last couple of years.”
The size of each fighter might play an important role in the upcoming fight. Aljamain is bigger than Cejudo, but Cejudo may be the one to win this fight because his power outweighs Aljamain’s wrestling abilities. It will be interesting to see what will happen!
When it comes to Cejudo getting a title shot without having to wait, Sandhagen has understood that it’s not really worth worrying about something which he can’t do anything about.
Sandhagen knows it might cause problems if Cejudo takes back the title because Cejudo asked to fight Alexander Volkanovski so he could become a champ of three divisions. Sandhagen hopes that a win for Cejudo at UFC 288 doesn’t make the division too confusing.
Sandhagen said he isn’t too sure what will happen in the next couple of months and things can change. He finds it weird that Cejudo, someone who likes to cause trouble, is getting a shot at the title. Cejudo might cause even more trouble if he wins, which might not be what UFC wants.
I’m not sure what’s going on politically, but it seems like an interesting choice since there are a lot of influential people involved. It might be strange, but who knows? I’m just hoping that Cejudo wins and he doesn’t cause any trouble if he does win.
