Jon Anik believes the bantamweight championship main event between Aljamain Sterling and Henry Cejudo is happening at the right time, generating excitement among fans and potentially solidifying Sterling as the greatest bantamweight of all time.
For Jon Anik, the upcoming bantamweight championship main event between Aljamain Sterling and the returning Henry Cejudo is happening at the right time. Sterling vs. Cejudo caps off Saturday’s UFC 288 fight card at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. Anik, who will call the action alongside Joe Rogan and UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier, admits he was somewhat lukewarm on the idea of Cejudo getting a title shot in his first fight after coming back from a three-year retirement, but as the matchup gets closer and closer, the longtime play-by-play voice is excited for it.
“I think for a lot of us, in a true meritocracy in what we would argue [No. 1] through 75 in the UFC’s deepest division, 135 pounds, there’s a wealth of No. 1 contenders,” Anik told MMA Fighting. “Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera was title shot worthy before he took the Cory Sandhagen fight. I told him not to take that fight. So there was not a lack of contenders, and I think even the undisputed UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling was outwardly surprised when he polled the masses between Henry Cejudo and Sean O’Malley, and there was a lot of support for Henry Cejudo. I would even take it a step further and suggest to you that I feel like maybe Dana White even had some initial reluctance to immediately let Henry Cejudo return into a championship setting. But I do think when you look at all factors, internal metrics, what Henry Cejudo has accomplished as a combat sports athlete, the opportunity for Aljamain Sterling, in my mind, to cement himself as the greatest bantamweight of all-time with the strength of a win over Henry Cejudo, there’s a lot at play.
Sterling looks to defend his title for the third time, while also putting his eight-fight win streak on the line. “Funk Master” captured the title via disqualification, went on to defend it in a close fight against the man he defeated via disqualification to win the belt in Petr Yan more than a year later, then stopped T.J. Dillashaw at UFC 280 in October, a fight that has not aged well due to Dillashaw revealing that he entered the bout with a shoulder injury. In Anik’s eyes, Sterling is one of the more undervalued fighters on the roster, yet still has a case with another win or two to solidify himself as the best fighter in the division’s history.
For Cejudo, he returns for the first time since stopping Dominick Cruz at UFC 249 in May 2020, where he announced his retirement. Many have wondered, including Anik, about why the Olympic gold medalist and former two-division champ is coming back to compete. “If ever there were an athlete on this roster top to bottom who could come back and do so with flying colors after an extended layoff like this, I think it’s Henry Cejudo,” Anik explained. “Now we did notice that he had a pretty significant cut that seemed to happen early on in this training camp, so perhaps that had some sort of factor in terms of the optimal nature of this training camp. But I pulled out my Henry Cejudo notes earlier today and just the appetite for training, the appetite for knowledge, altitude capsules, cognitive work, nutrition, brain analysis, all of that was accompanying his championship run while he was still here.