Aljamain Sterling has no regrets about extra hype, attention before loss to Bryan Caraway

A training injury has given Aljamain Sterling plenty of time to reflect on his first professional loss.

The up-and-coming bantamweight injured his right bicep in his first gym sparring session after returning home from his split-decision loss to Bryan Caraway last month, which has both given him plenty of time to plot his return, but also a bit too much time to think about what went wrong.

“At the end of the day I take it for what it is,” Sterling said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I lost a close fight, I lost a battle of inches, it was just, it kills me kind of, a couple technical things on my end, that’s mostly what bothers me.”

The loss was a tough pill to swallow on several fronts. For one, it was Sterling first fight of his new UFC contract. For another, he baited Caraway over social media into taking the fight, and for the third, the matchup was heavily promoted as a featured attraction on UFC Fight Pass.

But Sterling refused to use the extra hype as an excuse for his defeat.

“I asked for the extra media,” Sterling said. “I asked for extra attention, I asked for the extra hype. I poked the bear to get the fight because I wanted a tough fight, whereas he didn’t want a tough fight, he wanted an easier fight, and I wanted to challenge myself to see where I can go. People can say the media stuff drains you and everything, but you set everything up accordingly to the schedule. … I feel like I had the best …

continue reading in source www.mmafighting.com