{"id":629182,"date":"2026-04-26T05:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/629182\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T05:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:02:10","slug":"championship-caliber-pros-react-to-aljamain-sterlings-lopsided-ufc-vegas-116-main-event-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/629182\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Championship caliber\u2019: Pros react to Aljamain Sterling\u2019s lopsided UFC Vegas 116 main event win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Aljamain Sterling isn\u2019t exiting the title picture anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The former bantamweight champion cemented his spot at the front of the featherweight contender line with a unanimous decision win over Youssef Zalal in the main event of UFC Vegas 116 on Saturday. Zalal put up a fight, but in the end Sterling\u2019s overwhelming grappling game saw him control the fight on the mat and score plenty of ground-and-pound to break Zalal over the course of 25 minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Sterling has now won three out of four fights since moving up to 145 pounds, with his lone loss coming at the hands of fellow top contender Movsar Evloev. Whether Sterling did enough to pass Evloev for a shot at Alexander Volkanovski is anyone\u2019s guess, but he once again put on a performance that left his peers impressed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Check out the pros reactions from social media below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aljamain Sterling isn\u2019t exiting the title picture anytime soon. The former bantamweight champion cemented his spot at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":["post-629182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}