Aljamain Sterling says Cory Sandhagen doesn’t deserve a title shot with a win over TJ Dillashaw

Aljamain Sterling doesn’t believe there are title implications on the line in the UFC Vegas 32 main event.

In the main event of the Fight Night card on Saturday, Cory Sandhagen is welcoming former bantamweight champ TJ Dillashaw back to the Octagon in a highly-anticipated bout. Although many believe the winner of this fight will face the winner of Sterling vs. Petr Yan 2, the bantamweight champ disagrees. Instead, he thinks if Sandhagen wins, he doesn’t deserve a title shot, but he thinks Dillashaw would get one if he wins.

“You beat T.J. Dillashaw, does that give you a title shot? I don’t know,” Sterling said on his “The Weekly Scraps Podcast” (via MMAJunkie). “But if T.J. beats him, does that give T.J. a title shot? It should absolutely give T.J. a title shot. Absolutely. But in the sense of the other way that I’m looking at it, I don’t know what this win really does for Sandhagen other than getting another marquee name added to his resume.”

Although Sterling believes Dillashaw would get a title shot with a win, he doesn’t think the former champ will. Instead, he believes the time off will hinder Dillashaw and it will be Sandhagen getting his hand raised.

“T.J.’s been suspended, out of competition for two years, he cheated,” Sterling said. “He’s been cheating for a very long time. Ask his teammates. This is something that has been disclosed to me years ago, and of course you don’t want to be the whistle blower and not have any evidence, but the evidence has been his former teammates talking about it, and of course now being caught. I think it’s pretty safe to say where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and he said at the press conference against Cody Garbrandt ‘yeah right’ when Garbrandt said, ‘Bro, you were the one showing everyone how to do it,’ and everyone just brushed it under the rug.

“I’m just excited to see this fight. I think it’s gonna be a good stylistic matchup. A guy who’s so much taller, rangier, fights with so much calmness and now fighting with a little more stank in terms of brutality, trying to really hurt guys in there,” Sterling continued. “I think it’s gonna be a very, very fun fight to watch. If I had to put my money on it, I gotta say Sandhagen gets the job done. These guys used to train together, and I do believe them formally training together gives him some type of confidence that he understands what he’s dealing with going in there. If T.J.’s truly off the stuff, I like Sandhagen’s chances even better in this one.”

If Sandhagen wins and Sterling beats Yan in the rematch, perhaps Sandhagen doesn’t get the title shot as Sterling submitted him in 88 seconds a year ago. However, there’s no denying him that he would’ve earned a title shot with three straight wins.

Do you agree with Aljamain Sterling that Cory Sandhagen doesn’t deserve a title shot with a win over TJ Dillashaw?