“When we were in the back room, Ray (Longo) had just stepped out, and I told the guys, I was like, ‘I’m going to let you guys know I don’t really know what I’m going to do from here. I need to let it settle a little bit, but at 35, I don’t know if I really want to climb the ladder all over again,'” Sterling said on his YouTube channel.

Sterling served as the king of the 135-pound division from March 6, 2021 through August 19, 2023. He won the title after then-champion Petr Yan was disqualified for an illegal knee. He then defended the title in a rematch. From there he defended it another two times before eventually being dethroned by Sean O'Malley at UFC 292. 

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“I don’t want to say from scratch, but the end goal is so much further. I’m at a point where it’s like, is that worth the time invested for the surgeries, the pain, the training, the sacrifice? Do I still have that fight to commit to do that all the way up until the belt again, knowing that there’s still a good chance, like there’s still some other dogs that I could potentially fight and not have the fight go my way?”

He then moved up to 145 pounds where he won his debut versus Calvin Kattar but dropped his next fight versus Movsar Evloev. 

“Do I continue, or do I just help out the guys and help them get ready for their fights and what not and maybe just take fun fights? I don’t know,” Sterling said. “I don’t want to retire, but I’ve got to see what the UFC offers and then kind of make a decision to go from there to see where my positioning is. … It’s tough to even talk like this because I’m only 35. I know people think I still look good and everything, but my body hurts.

“I can’t train the way I used to. I used to do two, three training sessions a day. I can’t do that anymore. Even the grappling sessions that I would do to make 135 pounds, I feel like I can’t do that anymore. I can’t train the way I used to and I don’t know if that gave me an edge or just broke my body down more, but that’s just where I’m at. I’ve just got to see where the chips fall and go from there.”

 

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