This Saturday Hooker vs Parnasse · Accor Arena Paris France See this week's picks →
Events · UFC Fight Night: Ngannou vs. Velasquez · Jimmie Rivera vs Aljamain Sterling
From the tape · 17 Feb 2019

Jimmie Rivera vs Aljamain Sterling

UFC Fight Night: Ngannou vs. Velasquez · Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Result

Aljamain Sterling beat Jimmie Rivera

Method
Decision - Unanimous
Round
3 of 3
Clock
5:00
BantamweightMain cardReferee · Ryan Brueggeman

We published no prediction for this bout. Everything on this page is the official record and the tape it was fought on — the result, the round-by-round counts, the judges’ cards where they exist and the sportsbook line where one was published. Our graded calls start in 2026 and live on the public record.

JR
Red corner JimmieRivera“El Terror”Team Tiger Schulmann · Ramsey, New Jersey
VSOn the tape
Blue corner AljamainSterling“Funk Master”Serra-Longo Fight Team · Cortland, New York
Bantamweight3 rounds17 Feb 2019
The story going in
  • Carries 48 points more takedown defence than Sterling.
  • Comes in on a 2-fight win streak.
  • Has finished 4 of 8 UFC wins.
23-5
Record
26-5
29
Age
29
5' 4"
Height
+3″5' 7"
68″
Reach
+3″71″
Orthodox
Stance
Orthodox
7
UFC bouts
+411
1/617% of wins
Finishes
+33%4/850% of wins
Team Tiger Schulmann
Gym
Serra-Longo Fight Team
Ramsey, New Jersey
From
Cortland, New York
Vitals, record, nickname and camp come from the public UFC fighter register and are current, not a snapshot of fight night. UFC bouts, finish rate and every storyline line are counted off the official UFC fight record. A tick marks the side holding the raw edge in that row — longer reach, taller, younger, more bouts, a higher finish rate. It is a fact about the tape, not a prediction, and rows with no clean comparison (record, stance, gym, hometown) carry no tick at all. Any row we cannot fill on both sides is left out rather than half-drawn. Streaks, bout counts and finish rates are as they stood going into this fight — this bout and everything after it is excluded from the count.

Round by round

Every round the fight went, shaded by where the significant strikes actually landed — the takedowns, control time and knockdowns beside them, and how the three judges scored that round.

UFCStats · per round

3 rounds of tape

Round 15:00 of action
Jimmie Rivera7 sig landed
HEAD14%1 of 4BODY29%2 of 4LEGS57%4 of 4
Aljamain Sterling21 sig landed
HEAD0%0 of 7BODY76%16 of 18LEGS24%5 of 5
7 of 12
Sig.
strikes
21 of 30
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 3
1:27
Control
2:08
Distance 2Clinch 5Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 4Clinch 17Ground 0
Judges · this round · Rivera firstMichael Bell9–10Chris Flores9–10Chris Lee9–10
Round 25:00 of action
Jimmie Rivera9 sig landed
HEAD22%2 of 16BODY33%3 of 6LEGS44%4 of 4
Aljamain Sterling48 sig landed
HEAD40%19 of 47BODY31%15 of 18LEGS29%14 of 15
9 of 26
Sig.
strikes
48 of 80
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 2
0:49
Control
0:36
Distance 8Clinch 1Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 42Clinch 6Ground 0
Judges · this round · Rivera firstMichael Bell9–10Chris Flores9–10Chris Lee9–10
Round 35:00 of actionEnded 5:00
Jimmie Rivera8 sig landed
HEAD62%5 of 39BODY25%2 of 6LEGS12%1 of 1
Aljamain Sterling32 sig landed
HEAD53%17 of 42BODY25%8 of 15LEGS22%7 of 9
8 of 46
Sig.
strikes
32 of 66
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 2
0:33
Control
0:00
Distance 7Clinch 1Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 31Clinch 0Ground 1
Judges · this round · Rivera firstMichael Bell9–10Chris Flores9–10Chris Lee9–10

Significant strikes, takedowns, control time, knockdowns and submission attempts exactly as UFCStats recorded them for this bout, round by round. Zone percentages are that round’s landed head, body and leg counts over their own total — raw arithmetic, nothing modelled or smoothed. A round in which a fighter landed nothing shades empty and reads zero; it is never filled in from the round before.

The cards, totalled

The judges’ final totals, the media’s cards beside them, and how these judges usually score. Their round-by-round 10–9s are with the rounds above.

Official card

Unanimous Decision

Referee · Ryan Brueggeman
Jimmie RiveraAljamain Sterling
Official totals — Jimmie Rivera first
JudgeTotal
Michael Bell27–30
Chris Flores1.9 avg spread · 44% wide27–30
Chris Lee2.0 avg spread · 44% wide27–30

Each judge’s round-by-round scores sit with the round they belong to, in the round-by-round section above — switch a round there and the three cards for it change with the stats.

Media cards — 21 scored, Jimmie Rivera first · unofficial

Dominik Durniat Polsat Sport27–30
MM AMania.com27–30
Paul Fontaine WrestlingObserver.com27–30
Jordan Colbert Sherdog.com27–30
Ant Walker Sherdog.com27–30
Phil Murphy ESPN27–30
Drake Riggs BJPenn.com27–30
Dayne Fox BloodyElbow.com27–30
Rob Tatum CombatPress.com27–30
MM ABrasil.com.br27–30
Tim Burke BloodyElbow.com27–30
Steve Duncan mma.uno27–30
Keith Shillan FanSided.com27–30
Nolan King FloCombat27–30
Michael DeSantis MMASucka.com27–30
Matthew Wells FanSided.com27–30
Mike Straus MMAJA27–30
Steven Kelliher Tapology.com27–30
Wesley Riddle MMASucka.com27–30
Ryan Frederick WrestlingObserver.com28–29
Adam Martin Sherdog.com28–29

Fan vote · unofficial

30-27 Sterling · 73%29-28 Sterling · 20%30-26 Sterling · 3%30-28 Sterling · 3%

30 fan cards submitted to MMA Decisions.

Official cards come from the UFCStats fight record and MMA Decisions. Media cards and the fan vote are MMA Decisions’ own collection and are not official. Judge tendency figures are that judge’s whole recorded history, not this bout — they are context for how a card was scored, never a claim that it was scored wrongly.

Takedowns

Takedowns

The level change — head to head

Career UFC takedown rates. Red corner left, blue corner right.

Jimmie Rivera

0.88takedowns / 15 min
0.88 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
2.54 / 15m
3.26 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
7.94 / 15m
27%
ACCURACY
32%
0.10 / 15m
SUB ATT
0.60 / 15m

Aljamain Sterling

2.54takedowns / 15 min

Career UFC takedown rates exactly as UFCStats publishes them: takedowns landed per 15 minutes, completion rate, submission attempts per 15 minutes, and the share of takedowns tried on them that they stuffed. Attempts per 15 is the one derived figure — landed ÷ completion rate — and it is omitted wherever either input is missing. UFCStats writes 0% where no attempt was recorded at all, so a percentage of exactly zero reads “n/a” here rather than as a measured rate. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average. Rate bars run to the population’s 95th percentile (5.32 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked roster-wide

The market story

Where the price started and where it finished — the sportsbook consensus, with the vig removed. We captured no price series for this bout, so there is no chart to draw.

Jimmie Rivera↓ −11.8pp
open 67.4%close 55.6%
Aljamain Sterling↑ +11.8pp
open 32.6%close 44.4%
0%50%100%
OpenClosing consensus (BFO, vig removed)

Jimmie Rivera opened at 67.4% and closed at 55.6% (−11.8pp), with Aljamain Sterling moving the other way by the same amount — the two are one de-vigged pair, so they always sum to 100%. There is no line between those two points because nobody recorded one: we hold the open and the close for this bout, not the days in between.

Show the numbers
CornerOpen (US)Close (US)Open %Close %Move
Jimmie Rivera-265-13767.4%55.6%−11.8pp
Aljamain Sterling18511732.6%44.4%+11.8pp
Opening and closing moneylines from BestFightOdds (data/refs/bfo_fighter_moneylines.csv), one row per fighter per bout, de-vigged pairwise so the two corners sum to 100% · scraped 2026-06-10. No price series was captured for this bout, so no line is drawn between the two points.
← Every fighter on the record