Aljamain Sterling was brutally knocked out by Marlon Moraes knee before seven-fight win streak he

UFC star Aljamain Sterling has had a difficult journey to the top of the sport that included getting brutally knocked out by Marlon Moraes in 2017.

On Saturday, Sterling will look to make the second defence of his bantamweight title when he takes on TJ Dillashaw in the UFC 280 co-main event.

‘The Funk Master’ became the 135lb king when he picked up a win over Petr Yan – who will fight Sean O’Malley at UFC 280 – by disqualification after eating an illegal knee at UFC 259 in March 2021.

Over a year later, Sterling finally cemented his reign as champion by beating Yan in a five-round rematch at UFC 273 which put their rivalry to bed – at least for now.

While one knee to the head made Sterling a champion last year, another derailed his title charge back in 2017 when he was just another contender.

After picking up a career-best win over Renan Barao to improve his record to 14-2, the Jamaican-American was matched up with Moraes who was about to go on an epic title run.

The fight was over after a wild 67 seconds that saw Sterling get dropped with a punch before he popped back up and ran into a knee that knocked him out cold.

Moraes picked up two more stoppage wins over big-name opponents before pushing Henry Cejudo to the brink of defeat in their title fight at UFC 238 in 2019.

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Since then, he’s lost four consecutive fights by stoppage and been released by the UFC. Meanwhile, Sterling has put together an impressive seven-fight win streak to bounce back in the best way possible.

The 33-year-old beat the likes of Cody Stamann, Jimmie Rivera, Pedro Munhoz and Cory Sandhagen to earn himself a long overdue title shot which he made good on.

He’ll be hoping to make it eight wins in a row against TJ Dillashaw who has previously held the bantamweight title twice and looked impressive in his first fight back after serving a two-year drug ban.

In the build-up to UFC 280, Sterling has frequently brought up his opponent's history of cheating and they recently went back and forth about it at a pre-fight press conference.

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