Sterling could feel darkness setting in when Youssef
Zalal caught him in a guillotine.
Sterling (26-5) and Zalal (18-6) traded leather in the main event
at
UFC Fight Night 274 last Saturday at the Apex in Las Vegas. It
was complete domination by Sterling, barring a brief guillotine
scare in the third round. As Zalal caught Sterling in a guillotine,
“Funkmaster” took him down, leading to an even tighter choke.
However, Sterling maintained composure and defended the choke and
went on to dominate the rest of the round and the fight to earn a
unanimous decision win.
Difficult to Breathe
Sterling recently revealed that Zalal’s guillotine was
substantially tight. “Funkmaster” even felt his vision clouding
momentarily. However, the former bantamweight champion just didn’t
have any quit in him. Sterling admits that he might have tapped to
a similar choke in training.
“It was tight,” Sterling told Home of Fight. “I could definitely feel my trachea;
everything was kind of closing off, it was really hard to breathe.
I was starting to wheeze a little bit, it felt like it was starting
to get a little black. I was just like, ‘I’m gonna go to sleep
because I’m just not tapping.’ I just could not give him the
satisfaction that he made me tap. If that was training, I would
have tapped.”