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A prank on former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling nearly turned disastrous.

In the video clip, which you can see below, Sterling is sitting at a table, minding his business, and scrolling through his phone when another individual wearing a VR headset approaches and mistakes him for a woman.

Clearly, the ‘Funk Master’ was in no mood for shenanigans. And as expected, the comments from UFC fans on X did not disappoint.

Aljamain Sterling gearing up for his featherweight debut at UFC 300

After surrendering the bantamweight title to Sean O’Malley at UFC 292 last August, Aljamain Sterling is ready to conquer a new division. On Saturday, April 13, the ‘Funk Master’ will make his featherweight debut as a part of the promotion’s loaded UFC 300 card in Las Vegas. Welcoming Sterling to the division will be Calvin Kattar.

It will be Kattar’s first fight since suffering an injury against Arnold Allen in October 2022. ‘The Boston Finisher’ goes into the bout having lost three of his last four. Despite that, he’s still holding strong at No. 7 in the division.

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UFC middleweight Bo Nickal isn’t backing down from his criticism toward Olympic gold medalist Jordan Burroughs following a fiery exchange during the recent NCAA Wrestling Championships.

The altercation between the two champions started when Burroughs provided commentary for the ESPN broadcast as Penn State’s Carter Starocci took home his fourth title with a 2-0 victory in the finals despite dealing with a serious knee injury that many speculated could have been a torn ACL. During the match, Burroughs told UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier that Starocci’s opponent should definitely target that injured leg in competition.

Following the match, Starocci turned his attention to the upcoming Olympic wrestling trials in April, where he’s expected to compete at 74 kilograms (163 pounds) — the same division as Burroughs. Once again, Burroughs doubled down on his declaration that he would use Starocci’s injury against him if given the chance.

“He said April 19 and 20. I know a guy that’s going to be there,” Burroughs said on the broadcast. “I’d love to see him. I tell you what, if him and I meet each other in the bracket, I’m going right for that right leg.”

Nickal, who won three NCAA titles at Penn State, slammed Burroughs’ commentary during the event. The UFC middleweight said it was “really classy” for Burroughs to admit that he would target Starocci’s injured leg and called him “unprofessional.” Burroughs fired back on social media, stating, “You punch guys in the face for a living. Shut up.”

Days later on his podcast, Nickal expanded on his thoughts regarding Burroughs, and it seems his biggest problem stemmed from the comments made about the upcoming Olympic trials. Rather than allowing Starocci to have his moment to celebrate becoming the sixth person in history to win four NCAA titles in Division I wrestling, Burroughs put the spotlight back on himself.

“It’s not his moment,” Nickal said. “So why take a guy’s fourth national title and one of the biggest moments in his career and make it about yourself? To me, it just shows his character.

“The thing that bothers me is nobody sees this. He always tries to act like an ambassador of the sport and, ‘Oh, congratulations to Penn State, I’m so proud of you guys and what you’re doing.’ Bro, you’re a freaking fraud. You just want to make it about yourself.”

It doesn’t appear that Nickal is looking to mend fences with Burroughs, especially with the Olympic trials starting just a week after his next fight at UFC 300 on April 13.

Nickal expects that he’ll cross paths with Burroughs sooner rather than later and he hopes the six-time world champion keeps the same energy toward him that he had on the night Starocci captured his title.

“Don’t come at our guys and don’t act friendly to me when I see you,” Nickal said. “Because I guarantee you, he’ll try to see me and be like, ‘What’s up Bo, dap it up,’ and be cool. I’m like no, we’re not cool. I don’t really care to be cool with you.”

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Bruno Silva isn’t happy with the way Chris Weidman and referee Gary Copeland acted at UFC Atlantic City.

“Blindado” was poked in the eye in the second round Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall and another couple of eye pokes forced him to fall to the canvas in pain. Weidman followed up with punches until Copeland called for the TKO finish. Silva immediately protested and the replay showed the Brazilian was poked in the eye twice during Weidman’s final attack.

“The referee was bizarre,” Silva said in an interview with MMA Fighting on Sunday. “He f***** up, and then f***** up on top of that. The least they could do is a no-contest. No way. He put his finger inside my eye.”

Instead of ruling it a no-contest, the commission deemed the result a technical decision in favor of Weidman. All three judges gave the former champion a win in both rounds, plus a 10-9 for the 2:18 that lasted the final stanza. Silva felt that the New Jersey commission unfairly favored the New York native with their calls, and will file an appeal with the commission.

“We think it’s hard for Chris Weidman to accept a rematch but the no-contest would be fair,” Silva said. “Let’s see what the UFC does. I just want things done the right way, the fair way. I went there and fought and you didn’t see any malice from my part.”

“I thought the referee was stopping it because of my eye, but then I saw [Weidman] celebrating,” he continued. “I was like, ‘No f****** way this m*********** knocked me out. I was never knocked out in my career. I went back up so angry, telling the referee to look at the big screen. I want to beat him up but I knew that would f*** my career. I had to control myself there.

“I went to the medical backstage and my cornerman said they has changed the result and I felt relieved because there was no knockout. I thought they were going to rule it a no-contest, but then he said it was a unanimous win. I didn’t understand it. He poked me in the eye in the second round, poked me in the third, and it’s still an unanimous decision win for him?”

Silva said he wasn’t mad at Weidman at first, but changed his view of the situation once he re-watched the bout back at the fighter’s hotel.

“Chris Weidman acted in bad faith,” Silva said. “It’s said [by the referee] at the locker room that you can’t fight with your fingers pointing straight, it should be either up or with your hands closed. He spent the entire fight with his fingers pointing at my face, and still celebrated as he had knocked me out.”

Weidman said at the post-fight interview that it was Silva’s fault because “you can’t drop to the ground like that if your eye gets poked. You’ve got to stand. You can’t just drop. He did that three times and it caught up to him.”

“What did he want me to do, to smile at his face?” Silva responded. “He put his finger inside my eye. It was my eye, not his. To be told off by the guy that is in the wrong if unbelievable, right?”

Silva was respectful towards Weidman as a legend of the sport on last week’s episode of MMA Fighting’s Trocação Franca podcast, but wouldn’t be so nice if they are paired up for a rematch one day.

“I never liked Chris Weidman because of how he handled Anderson Silva’s leg break, but I always try to see it as a professional,” Silva said. “I didn’t know him personally. We see each other a day before the weigh-ins and I wasn’t going to talk to him, but he came to me and shook my hand, wished me good luck. There was no animosity during the fight, we were there to fight, and I was angry at the referee when the fight was over.

“But when I got to the hotel and watched the fight, f***, he was very disloyal. He knows what he did, but being a man is at risk of extinction. No way he would say he’s wrong, that we could do a rematch. He won’t do that. I don’t even expect that. Only men would do that, people with character. I won’t stay here disrespecting him either but when we fight again, it’s going to be different. There will be no loyalty anymore.”

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I’m a little worried about Chris Weidman’s future.

Back in 2021, Chris Weidman suffered a grotesque leg break in the opening seconds of his rematch with Uriah Hall. Recovering from that shattered limb has been the story of Weidman’s career ever since. For the first time since August 2020, Weidman was able to pick up the victory over Bruno Silva last night (Sat. March 30, 2024) at UFC Atlantic City. More importantly, he was able to complete a fight without suffering some kind of miserable injury in the process.

In most ways, it’s an objective victory for Weidman. His hand was raised in front of a home town crowd. At 40 years of age, he fought well and fought hard to secure the win. Really, everything else is secondary.

So why am I so apprehensive?

I have two explanations, the illogical and the reasonable. The former is more interesting, so let’s start there: I’m concerned the MMA Gods have already smote Chris Weidman once, and that they’re now certain to do it again.

Think about it: Weidman scores a massive victory by shattering Anderson Silva’s leg with a check and celebrates while “The Spider” is shrieking in pain. Nearly a decade later, it’s him on the floor with the exact same injury. It’s some kind of punishment from an ancient myth or morality play. How else would one man be involved in two of the four shin shatters in UFC history? There have been thousands of fights and thousands of fighters; the odds are ridiculous.

Now, Weidman is playing the same game with eye pokes. He eye poked Bruno Silva no less than four times in a 12 minute fight. Twice, the action was paused due to eye pokes, yet no points were taken. After those pauses and several warnings, Weidman continued to reach out for his opponent’s gloves with his fingers extended.

In the finishing sequence, Weidman managed to poke BOTH of his opponent’s eyes! The 1-2 eye poke! It’s almost unfathomable. Then, he was briefly awarded a knockout win that was later knocked down to a technical decision.

Silva got absolutely f—ked. Weidman didn’t lose any points despite all the fouls. Silva wasn’t given any time to recover, nor did he have the final three minutes of the fight to score a comeback knockout … something he’s achieved before and Weidman has suffered before! It’s an abject failure of the officiating crew, and just as a side note, Sedrique Dumas also lost via legalized eye poke!

Based on the leg break precedent, MMA God mythology dictates that at some point in the near future, Weidman will have his eyes gouged or at the very least be screwed by officiating.

On a more serious and realistic note: Weidman is going to walk away from this win confident (or delusional). He’s going to think it’s championship time again or at least that he should prolong his career for another handful of fights because he fought well tonight (aside from all the fouls).

In fact, Weidman is still 40. He’s still slower, less durable, and more prone to fatigue. Bruno Silva entered this fight having lost four of his last five and cracked him with plenty of shots. If UFC continues to put Weidman in the cage with half-decent Middleweights, one of them is going to brutally put him out to pasture. Because he won here — controversy and nuance aside — that’s more likely to happen now.

The smart play would be to walk away on a (somewhat undeserved) high note. Enjoy the hard-fought victory in front of family and friends, the people who won’t remember or care about the eye pokes. Then, go cash both halves of the fight purse and sail off into the sunset.

Of course, that won’t happen. In one way or another, a perverse bit of karmic justice will eventually be served. On a long enough time line, Silva’s scratched corneas will see revenge.

For complete Atlantic City results, coverage, and highlights, click HERE.

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