Aljamain Sterling had "zero doubt" that he would beat Petr Yan and defend his bantamweight title

Aljamain Sterling overcame the odds at UFC 273 to defeat Petr Yan and cement his hold on the bantamweight title. While the bookies and fans may not have believed in him, Sterling had unwavering confidence coming into the rematch that he would win.

In a new interview with The MMA Hour, Sterling shared his mindset coming up to the pivotal fight and whether he was suffering from any doubts after the first fight with Yan went so poorly. He said:

"Zero. I had zero doubt that I could beat that guy. No exaggeration. Like obviously it's a fist fight, four ounce gloves, anything can happen. I knew I could get knocked out because it has happened to me before. But I knew going into that fight that there's no way I lose this fight unless I stand there in front of this guy and let him just knock me out. Which I knew wasn't going to happen, so in my head there's no way I'm losing this fight."

Aljamain Sterling used a grapple-heavy gameplan to defeat Petr Yan on the scorecards. It was a close split decision win that came down to how the first round was scored. According to Sterling, he deserved to win with bigger numbers than that.

"I felt like I comfortably won still, and ... two 10-8 rounds, I should have had two 10-8 rounds. I don't know how you can have four minutes of control time, ground and pound, submission attempts, and that doesn't hit the criteria that they implemented for a 10-8 round."

Watch the full interview with Aljamain Sterling on The MMA Hour below:

While Petr Yan was quick to demand a rematch after the loss, UFC president Dana White has suggested T.J. Dillashaw will be the next title challenger for Aljamain Sterling.

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Aljamain Sterling is happy he finally got to prove his haters wrong

It took over a year from the first fight between Aljamain Sterling and Petr Yan to the second, and for that entire time period Sterling was receiving endless criticism and bullying from fans online. Sterling told The MMA Hour:

"People want to be malicious and talk about your family and all this stuff, call me monkey, drop the N-bomb, a whole bunch of s--t. I dealt with a lot, good thing I had thick skin because that probably would have broken a lot of people. But not this guy. This guy came prepared, ready for battle. And I came ready to win, I didn't come for a participation trophy."

Now that Sterling has proved his haters wrong, he's circulating an apology form he expects them to fill out before he'll interact with them on Twitter: