UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling is banned from fighting in New York because of two adverse findings found on a brain scan.
Sterling defends his world title against former two-weight champion Henry Cejudo in the main event of UFC 288 in Newark, New Jersey this Saturday night. 'Funkmaster' has revealed the New York State Athletic Commission refused to clear him to fight in his UFC debut in 2014 because of two spots on his brain discovered during a pre-fight medical.
"So when I made my UFC debut, February 2014 at UFC 170, the Ronda Rousey vs. Sara McMann card, I believe. I had to get a CAT scan, first time ever getting a CAT scan. They found two spots on my brain, they were like a millimetre or something like that. It looked like there was trauma, and they weren’t sure what it was. I forget the exact term, aneurysm or angioma or something like that," he said on The MMA Hour.
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Sterling's UFC debut took place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas but he went for his pre-fight medical tests in New York because he trains in the city. The New York commission is notoriously strict as they became the 50th state in the United States to legalise MMA in 2016. Sterling explained the commission wouldn't clear him to fight without the spots being removed.
Doctors would have needed to drill into Sterling's head for the procedure, as he explained: "In order for me to be cleared, I would’ve had to like go take it out of my head. So, I wasn’t sure if I needed to get like drilled in my head to pull these things out. So they monitored it, they allowed me to fight in Nevada.
Sterling looks to make the third defence of his bantamweight title against Cejudo, who hasn't fought since retiring from fighting two years. The champion was given the all-clear regarding the spots on his brain a few years after they were first spotted on the CAT scan, but the New York commission have still refused to clear him despite the spots seemingly not being anything sinister.
"A couple years after they realised, nothing was happening. They were like, ‘Okay, you’re safe. You’re not bleeding out, you’re not going to die in the cage.’ Knock on wood! So things were good, and I was allowed to compete in Nevada and all the other states except New York.”
