UFC

Alexander Volkanovski continued his reign of dominance over the featherweight division with a fourth-round TKO win over "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung in the main event of UFC 273 on Saturday from VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida.

Volkanovski put on an absolute striking clinic in a completely dominant performance.

The Great got off to a hot start in the first round. His speed advantage was clear from the outset as he stuck Zombie at the end of his jab on multiple occasions and was gone before his opponent could counter.

The champion continued to batter the challenger into Round 2. He continued to make his opponent look like he was fighting underwater while Volkanovski's strikes only grew in confidence. He floored Jung with a counter left among other highlight-reel punches.

The champion even threw in a takedown for good measure.

The end nearly came in the third round. Volkanovski tattooed Jung with a clean right cross that sent Zombie to the mat. He was saved by the bell as the Australian was raining down strikes.

That salvation was short-lived. Volkanovski saw the blood in the water and finished the job in the fourth round. He landed back-to-back left-right combinations and Herb Dean mercifully called an end to the fight.

The Great has certainly lived up to his moniker as the featherweight champion. In a division that has featured multiple pound-for-pound greats in Conor McGregor, Max Holloway and Jose Aldo, he is making a strong case to be included among those names.

After all, he does have two wins over Holloway and another over Aldo. Unlike McGregor, he has stuck around in the division and earned not one but three title defenses now.

The former rugby player has big plans to keep busy this year as well as an eye on doing something that all three of those greats have also done: compete in a second weight class.

"I'm planning on staying at featherweight even if I move up, I want to float in both," he said, per James Lynch of MMA News (h/t Drake Riggs of MMA Fighting). "I'm not saying I want to just move to lightweight and stay at lightweight. When people ever ask me if I think of a move to lightweight, it is double champ status, while I still got both belts. The role of lightweight champ and featherweight champ, that's my vision."

Volkanovski at lightweight is an interesting proposition. At 5'6" with a 71-inch reach, he could be giving up quite a bit of size to the top echelon of the division.

But if there's one thing he's proved during his UFC career, it's that it's a bad idea to pick against him.

There's no disputing it now. Aljamain Sterling is the UFC's bantamweight champion after defeating Petr Yan via split decision in the co-main event of UFC 273 in Jacksonville, Florida.

The champion unified his belt with the interim version with his superior grappling in a tightly contested five-round scrap.

After gassing in the first fight it was clear that Sterling wanted to fight at a slower pace in the rematch. The first round was fought at a tepid pace as both fighters had an extended feeling-out period.

That didn't last as the fight descended into Round 2. Sterling got a clinch early on and parlayed it into a takedown and quickly took Yan's back with a body triangle, leaving Yan in a compromised position. He spent the rest of the round in survival mode fighting off Aljo's choke attempts and ground and pound.

The only question was whether it was enough for a 10-8 scorecard:

Sterling once again found his favorite position in the third round. He proved the second frame was no fluke by dragging Yan to the mat and once again becoming his backpack:

The interim champion rebounded in the fourth round. He landed an early left hook that shook Sterling and led to a takedown. He spent the majority of the round in top position and earned himself a round with his own brand of grappling.

With the fight potentially on the line, the fifth round never quite got to the intensity level one might expect. Yan defended several Sterling takedown attempts and had the most exciting moment of the frame with a  flying knee that nearly landed flush.

Sterling's greatest prize with the win is validation. Aljo won the title in less-than-ideal circumstances with his first win over Yan. The former champion was disqualified after landing a knee to the head while Sterling was on the mat.

It was an unfortunate ending for a fighter who had earned his title shot with a five-fight win streak that included a first-round submission of Cory Sandhagen.

There was far less controversy this time around.

Sterling had to deal with the criticism of how he won his belt for over a year. Now, he can put the controversy behind him as the rightful champion of the division.

"I was more annoyed that I couldn't get right back in there in a couple months and just silence everybody," Sterling told E. Spencer Kyte of UFC.com. "It's been a long year with people having post notifications on so they can write clown emojis."

The fact that he came back from neck surgery to fight Yan only makes the win more impressive. The bout was supposed to take place in September 2021, but Sterling still had complications from the procedure.

Now that he's healthy and he's settled the beef with Yan, a lot of possibilities are available for the Funk Master.

Zhang Weili and Joanna Jedrzejczyk have verbally agreed to a rematch, which is scheduled to take place June 11 at UFC 275 in Singapore.

Hunter Campbell, the UFC's chief business officer, told ESPN's Marc Raimondi on Saturday the contracts will be sent out soon to finalize the bout.

They earned Fight of the Night honors for their first encounter in March 2020, which Zhang won by split decision after a highly entertaining five-round brawl.

Jedrzejczyk hasn't entered the Octagon since that loss, but she fended off rumors of a possible retirement on multiple occasions while awaiting the right time to return.

Last May, the 34-year-old from Poland told MMA Fighting's Damon Martin her next fight is the last one of her current UFC deal and she wanted to make sure to position herself for a new contract that would make MMA worth the risks.

"It's stupid what I will say but it's not about the money but it's all about the money," she said. "I can make this money easily outside the Octagon without putting my life and health on the line. You know what I'm talking about."

A victory over Zhang would likely put her in position to earn a lucrative title fight against the winner of the UFC 274 women's strawweight battle between champion Rose Namajunas and challenger Carla Esparza.

Zhang is coming off back-to-back losses to Namajunas in April and November of last year. She'd been on a 21-fight winning streak before that pair of defeats.

She told China's People Magazine in January the setbacks didn't cause her belief to waver.

"Nothing is forever the same, like how I went from champion to challenger. And my future goal is to go from a challenger to a champion," Zhang said.

The rematch with Jedrzejczyk has a high standard to live up to based on their first matchup, but there's a chance it's worthy of the hype given the importance of the bout to both fighters.

A men's light heavyweight championship fight is scheduled to serve as the main event of the UFC 275 card as Glover Teixeira defends his belt against Jiri Prochazka.

What a long, strange 13 months it's been for Aljamain Sterling. 

Back in March 2021, Sterling (20-3) won the UFC bantamweight title by disqualification when Petr Yan (16-2) clocked him with an illegal knee. It happened as Yan was taking full control of the fight. After a back-and-forth beginning that saw Sterling ahead on one judge's scorecard and close on the other two, Yan began to decipher Sterling's timing.

According to UFC Stats, Sterling, an accomplished college wrestler, landed just one of 17 takedown attempts in the bout, and none after the first round. As Sterling began to flag, Yan came on and looked to be in position to win the title going away.

In other words, the fight was Yan's to lose. And that's exactly what happened.

After the DQ, Sterling became the new champ—and absorbed all the predictable online vitriol you might expect from that outcome, namely that he wasn't really the champ. Then he opted to undergo neck surgery to fix a long-standing disk issue, which further fanned the flames for those who claimed Sterling wasn't particularly enthusiastic about a rematch with Yan.

But Sterling is fully healed and ready to put it all on the line against Yan on Saturday at UFC 273. After waging a protracted psychic battle with many corners of the MMA internet—not to mention with Yan himself—Sterling says he's ready to take the asterisk off his championship.

He recently spoke to Bleacher Report about the fight, the criticism and his mindset heading into Jacksonville, Florida.

B/R: How's the neck, and how does it feel to be so close to competing again?

Sterling: It feels great to be back, man. I love competing. I've been doing it since 10th grade with the sport of wrestling. All those years I trained and competed week after week, even in the offseason, when there were still tournaments I could compete in.

So being out for longer than a year has been pretty frustrating. But now that I'm back, I feel like I haven't missed a step.

B/R: I'm a bit of a medical nerd, so I looked up the artificial disk replacement procedure that you had. It looks like a pretty involved procedure. You didn't get this done as a response to a single injury but rather for a chronic problem. What were the procedure and recovery like?

Sterling: The procedure was pretty freaky. I'm not gonna lie. I asked if I could record it so I could watch it later, because I'm into that stuff too, but it didn't work out. But I did see some images of my neck being open and the surgeon inserting the artificial disk. I was back doing soft physical therapy like two weeks in. Then I was back to bag work in like a month; I don't think I was supposed to do that, but I'm a little crazy, so.

So it was a fairly fast recovery to get back to the sport, but playing at a high level with muscle endurance, that was the part that seemed to take the longest to get back.

B/R: Let's shift gears to the fight. You've said over and over that no one wants to win the belt the way you did. Does that reality make it even more important for you to beat Yan and just show out in this rematch? 

Sterling: If I'm being 100 percent transparent and honest, based on a merit system, and based on my body of work, Cory Sandhagen and I were the ones that should have been fighting for that vacant title.

Anyone with a brain can see that [Yan] wasn't worthy of a shot at the title. I'm not saying his skill sets weren't good, but based on what we'd accomplished, we should've been fighting for it.

But I've held the belt this entire time, and Yan is my first defense. People can call me a paper champ all they want. I am not a paper champion. That's what I want to show people on April 9. 

It's just funny how people change their tunes after one performance. And I can tell you that performance won't happen again. It was a learning experience. He shot himself in the foot when he didn't get me out of there when he had a compromised Aljamain Sterling on the mat. He's never going to get that opportunity again.

I can't wait to make this guy eat his words and stick it to the fans who jumped off the bandwagon and the fake ones who pretended to be fans until something goes a little south.

B/R: At a glance, it seems personal with you and Yan, but I can never really tell for sure. Do you really not like him or is it just to sell pay-per-views?

Sterling: [Laughs] Honestly, I really don't know. I can see him as a guy I would talk s--t to on a regular basis and still be able to have a beer with him. Or maybe the guy in the group you don't like, but you tolerate him? I don't know.

I think we're very similar in our personalities. We both talk s--t in the lead-up to our fights. He's a little bit more dry with his talk, but we both like to do it. At the end of the day, he's trying to stake his claim as the best guy in the division, and I'm trying to do the same.

I also think he's a little bit of a dirty fighter, if I'm being 100 percent honest. And that's where my only real gripe comes from. I really think he thought he was going to get a slap on the wrist [for the illegal knee], and I did too.

I just can't wait to punch this guy in the face. He deserves it, and I'm the guy to do it.

UFC has announced a partnership with Crypto.com to give out $60,000 worth of cryptocurrency in fan-voted bonuses at pay-per-view events.

The bonuses will start at $30,000 for the night's favorite fighter, while the second-place winner will receive $20,000 and third-place will get $10,000 worth of bitcoin. 

"Crypto.com has been an official UFC partner for less than a year, and I'm telling you they are already one of the best partners we've ever had," UFC president Dana White said in a statement. "They're constantly coming up with new ideas about how we can work together to connect with the fans. This new Fan Bonus of the Night is an awesome way to get fans more engaged in our events while rewarding the fighters for bad-ass performances."

Fans will be able to vote on the best fighters at Crypto.com, starting with UFC 273 on Saturday. Voting begins at the start of the pay-per-view card and ends an hour after the conclusion of the broadcast.

The UFC already gives out three $50,000 bonuses, two for Performance of the Night and one for Fight of the Night.

Saturday's event is headlined by a featherweight championship bout between Alexander Volkanovski and Chan Sung Jung.

UFC star Conor McGregor is facing six charges after getting arrested for alleged dangerous driving in his home country of Ireland last month.

According to ESPN's Marc Raimondi, a Blanchardstown District Court spokesperson said Thursday that McGregor has been charged with two counts of dangerous driving, driving without a license, failure to produce a license, driving without insurance and failure to produce insurance.

Per Raimondi, McGregor's spokesperson Karen Kessler released the following statement after McGregor was arrested March 22 in Dublin: "Mr. McGregor was driving to the gym when he was stopped by [Irish police] for alleged road traffic violations. He passed the drug and alcohol tests taken at the station."

McGregor has gotten in trouble with the law multiple times in the past, including for throwing objects through the window of a bus thought to be carrying Khabib Nurmagomedov and for smashing a fan's cellphone in Florida.

After hearing the charges against him Thursday, McGregor tweeted that he was "straight back into training."

McGregor has not fought since July when he lost to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 by doctor stoppage after breaking his leg.

The 33-year-old veteran is one of the biggest stars in UFC history and one of the most successful fighters as well, having held the featherweight and lightweight titles.

He has lost three of his past four fights, however, and hasn't held a championship since 2018.

Despite the injury and his recent lack of success, McGregor has made it clear he intends to return to the Octagon soon.

Last month, McGregor expressed a desire to face UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman for the title in late summer.

It is unclear if that fight is on the table, as UFC has yet to announce a return date or opponent for the Irishman.