No reason to kick Aljamain Sterling when he's down after Petr Yan's illegal strike at UFC 259

Aljamain Sterling did not throw the illegal knee that resulted in a disqualification.

Aljamain Sterling did not write the unified rules of mixed martial arts, nor any of the subsequent updates and recommendations regarding downed opponents from the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports.

Aljamain Sterling didn’t ask out of the fight. The doctor and referee ended the bout.

Yet, because the bantamweight title went from Petr Yan — the illegal knee thrower— to Sterling — the illegal knee receiver — Sterling gets vilified in social media and the court of public opinion.

To be clear: Aljamain Sterling did nothing wrong.

He was a downed opponent, with his right knee on the canvas. He did not game the system with his hands, as many fighters have done in the past. So clearly was Sterling down, that referee Mark Smith shouted "grounded" as soon it occurred. One of Yan’s cornermen could be heard yelling, "Just punch, just punch."

In the eight seconds Yan held Sterling by the back of his head, he threw no punches. He did, according to an audio clip from the ESPN+ broadcast, ask his cornermen if he could kick now. Then he threw the knee, and one cornerman reacted positively and another cornerman did not.

"It was totally clear. There was no, ‘Is it up, is it down?’ " trainer Ray Longo said of Sterling being grounded. "And if you don't know the rules at that point, you should be stripped of your title. You really should. You should be stripped of your title and your driver's license."

MMA rules prohibit knees and kicks to the head of a grounded opponent. Yan said after the fight that he was focusing on Sterling's hands and whether they were down. Rules vary from state to state about the definition of a downed opponent, and they most always focus on the hands. But a knee on the ground equals a downed opponent in all instances.

"It was an intentional knee," UFC president Dana White said. "[Yan] was starting to win the fight. He was starting to absolutely, positively take control of that fight. He was winning. You could see Aljamain Sterling breaking. Why you throw that knee, I couldn’t tell you."

Sterling became the first to be awarded a UFC championship by disqualification. The fight was competitive and fast-paced, but Sterling started showing signs of fatigue in the third round.

This turn of the scorecards did Sterling no favors either. He trailed 29-28 on two judges’ cards and led 29-28 on the third judge’s card. He likely was on his way to losing the fourth round before Yan delivered the disqualifying knee. That would have left Sterling entering the fifth and final round needing to stop Yan within those five minutes to win the belt.

But because he was losing in the fight, the narrative turns negative.

Many UFC fighters expressed their thoughts on the moment and made them available for public consumption. Some said Sterling wanted out of the fight, or that he was acting, or making it look worse than it really was.

One former UFC bantamweight champion looking for attention now that his two-year ban for getting caught using EPO is over gave Sterling a "best actor in a title fight" award on Twitter. No points for creativity there, even fewer for credibility.

The Uniondale fighter has received quite a number of negative emails as well, ranging from lewd photos to racial epithets.

So, what exactly did Sterling do wrong here?

No one really seems to be able to answer that question with any legitimacy. He didn’t write the rule that says a champion loses his title when he gets disqualified and loses the fight for blatantly violating the rules. But, really, shouldn’t that be the case anyway? Don’t we always complain when a referee just keeps warning a fighter for grabbing the fence, or for eye pokes, or low blows or any other number of lesser offenses that so rarely end with the proper enforcement of a point deduction?

Is it really just that Yan was ahead on the judges’ cards and took the momentum from Sterling in rounds three and four? If Sterling was up on the cards, would you paint Yan as the villain for taking the cheap way out of the fight?

What Yan did — intentional or not — was illegal. (And if the fight somehow kept going and Yan was assessed a two-point penalty, Sterling would have been up on one card and even on the other two, assuming all three judges scored the fourth round for Yan.)

At every opportunity presented, Sterling hasn’t gloated or paraded about town like he won the fight outright. He said, even in a concussed state and full of emotions, at the end of the fight that he didn’t want to win this way. He took the belt off and tossed it down inside the octagon.

In social media posts since, Sterling has said: "I don’t feel like a champ yet until we do it again," and "He’s tougher than I expected."

Yan said all the right things in interviews after this fight, but he quickly fell in line with others on social media afterward. He took offense to photos Sterling’s teammates took with him at his house holding the belt.

"I didn’t win the UFC belt the way I envisioned it, but I also didn’t do anything illegal," Sterling wrote on his Instagram account Sunday night. "My friends and family flew miles to come see me and asked me to hoist the belt up as a champion, because I carried myself as such. If that offends you then you have no love in your life, and your own issues to sort out. I’m the ‘champ,’ but I won’t personally feel 100% validation until I defend this the way I envisioned winning it in the first place!"

This will blow over in MMA circles as soon as the next controversy pops up or a big-name fighter calls out another big-name fighter. So, basically, by this weekend.

But Sterling will have to live with it until he gets back into the cage for the rematch with Yan. Every interview he does, every podcast or internet radio show he appears on, every article written will touch upon this.

The plus side: Sterling vs. Yan 2 will have some heat on it.

"It’s going to make for an exciting, emotional rematch," Longo said. "No need for any marketing. I think it’s a promoter’s dream."

This time, though, Sterling will want to write his own ending.

By Mark La Monica

mark.lamonica@newsday.comLaMonicaMark

Mark La Monica is a deputy sports editor at Newsday. He also covers mixed martial arts.