Aljamain Sterling Details Beef With Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone

UFC welterweight Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and UFC bantamweight Aljamain “Funk Master” Sterling are both adored by the majority of fight fans. According to an account from Sterling on the latest episode of The MMA Hour, however, the two fighters are not particularly fond of one another.

Goaded on by friend and training partner Gian Villante, Sterling reluctantly recounted a heated run-in he had with Cowboy during this year’s International Fight Week, which occured around UFC 200 in July.

“I don’t know Donald Cerrone,” Sterling explained. “Donald Cerrone came up to me, he was drinking, and he made a comment about my chain. Ok, ha ha, cool, I understand. The chain’s not real, it’s a joke. It’s [part of] of my persona, it’s my character, it’s The Funk Master. Ok, I get it.” 

According to Sterling, Cowboy’s chain comment is not where this unfortunate run-in ended.

“We go to the bathroom and he makes another comment, and he actually said something inappropriate,” Sterling continued. “And for me, I wasn’t going to just let him slide and say that, cause for one, I don’t know you. You’re not one of my boys from my town, you’re not gonna say words like that and talk to me and make me feel a little uncomfortable. See, I get it. If he talks to his boys like that, that’s cool, but we’re not boys. So for you to come out and say something like that, it’s kinda weird for you to feel that comfortable with somebody who you’ve never actually hung out with, and never actually had a conversation with. So I felt a little uncomfortable that he felt that was ok. So I called him out on it, and later throughout the night it just kept getting heated.”

From there, Sterling said that Cowboy attempted to play the incident off as a joke. Unfortunately, however, the bantamweight prospect felt the damage was already done.

“He tried to turn it into a joke, more of a laughing matter,” he explained. “I understand, he tried to play it off, but for me, it just like ‘nah.’ It was funny, but at the same time I want you to address what you said and acknowledge that it was wrong. Whether you want to admit it or not, it was wrong, you don’t do that’ And he never did. So for me, I’m not just going to sit there and go ‘ha ha’ with you and make you think every time you see me you can say sh*t like that, cause it’s just not going down like that. I will stand up for myself.”

When he did stand up for himself, Sterling said that the beef reached a new level.

“He tried to give me the mean mug, and he said something like ‘I’ll beat the fuck out of your 135-pound ass.’ And I was like ‘I’m here man,” and he was like ‘I’ll do what [Bryan] Caraway did to you. And I’m like ‘bro, Caraway beat me by split decision, so if you want to talk about losses, we can go there. I’m not a d*ck like that, but you want to talk about losses we can go there, cause I’m pretty sure you’ve had a lot rougher nights than I did with a split decision loss.’”

From the sounds of it, the two fan favorites have not had any run-ins since International Fight Week, and hopefully it stays that way. What do you make of Sterling and Cowboy’s alleged beef? Sound off, PENN Nation!