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ALJAMAIN STERLING & DANA WHITE DISAGREE OVER UFC 296 TICKET MISHAP

Former UFC Bantamweight Champion Aljamain Sterling was set to attend this past weekend’s UFC 296 card, but a ticket mishap led to the former champion missing the event.

Sterling would post the following on X as the event was still going on:

The fighter would also discuss the issue on his Youtube Channel, calling the situation a disconnect between himself and whomever was responsible for the tickets.

“So, we go through this procedure, this channel, we put in our ticket request either the fighter themselves directly or your management,” Sterling said (transcript via Farah Hannoun of MMA Junkie). “I put in my request in about two-and-a-half weeks ago for two events; the Apex last weekend, Chris Gutierrez vs. Song Yadong, and for UFC 296 confirmed. Got the tickets for obviously the Apex and then this one I’m kind of assuming the same because it was already confirmed to me. So, I’m not trying to fan the flames. I think somewhere there was a little bit of a disconnect.”

UFC CEO Dana White says that Sterling’s ticket problems were due to one of Sterling’s sponsors and he believed that everything was good with the fighter in the end.

“Well, they were tickets that – he was with a sponsor,” White said at the UFC 296 post-fight press conference. “I don’t know how they got pulled or what happened, but the team reached right out to him and he was like, ‘Yeah, never mind, I’m good, I’m going to leave.'”

Sterling says that the ticket issues weren’t caused by the sponsor because he goes through the same channels as he did previously when attending UFC cards.

“The only thing I didn’t really understand is someone sent me the clip of, I guess, Dana saying that the tickets were through a sponsor,” Sterling said. “I don’t know what that was about because I’ve never had tickets from a sponsor for any of the UFC fights. I always go through the same exact channels every single time.”