UFC 288 goes down this weekend live from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The main event will see the undisputed bantamweight champion and home-town boy, Aljamain Sterling look to make the third defence of his title. Standing across from him will be Triple C, Henry Cejudo. Cejudo is the former flyweight and bantamweight champion but has been away from the sport for almost three years.
The fight itself is certainly intriguing. Sterling often relies on a heavy wrestling base to ground his opponents, dominate them on the ground and overwhelm them. The questions have to be asked, however, will he be able to work his game against the Olympic wrestling champion, Cejudo?
We also have to ask, how Cejudo will look after three years away from the sport, against a far bigger man and in a weight class that he’s never gone five rounds before.
Before any of these questions are answered, however, we have to take a look back at how we got to the UFC 288 main event. Cejudo will enter the fight as the challenger, despite never losing the belt, which is not something we see all that often.
We take a look at the history of the bantamweight division, how Cejudo captured the belt, defended it and how the belt changed hands after he ‘retired’.