Las Vegas, NV — Sean Strickland and Ariel Helwani are apparently on the same page about one thing: people who wear sunglasses indoors are assholes.
Helwani infamously dropped that line while speaking to Dillon Danis last month. Strickland had his own riff on the subject after turning up to Wednesday’s UFC Vegas 67 media day wearing a pair of shades.
That, said Strickland, was because his pupils were dilated following an eye test, the result of the middleweight stepping up on short notice to replace Kelvin Gastelum in the UFC Vegas 67 main event.
“People that wear sunglasses inside are a bunch of f*cking assholes. I think that should be known,” Strickland (25-5) exclaimed. “All you UFC fighters that wear sun— if you’re a UFC fighter and you wear sunglasses inside, you are the definition of a c*nt.”
Strickland now enters another main event, back-to-back after dropping a fight against Jared Cannonier to close out 2022. Plenty saw the fight going the other way, something Strickland addressed on Wednesday with media outlets including Cageside Press — though in traditional Strickland fashion, he spent half his time with the media wading off-topic and spouting copious amounts of bizarre, occasionally offensive commentary.
“I thought I got robbed, man. I thought I got robbed. I think a lot of people did [think that]. The scorecard got it robbed. It wasn’t close,” Strickland said when the subject of the Cannonier fight was brought up. “Let me tell you guys why it was close. I’ll tell you why it was close. What you guys seen there was a technical f*cking sharpshooter…”
At that point, Strickland wound up distracted by a gold chain sported by a media member, before comparing veteran journalist John Morgan to Watto from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
Eventually returning to the topic at hand, Strickland continued by saying “What you guys seen there is a Matrix-level style of boxing. Not one f*cking punch landed. I seen everything. I was living in the f*cking Matrix. I was living the Matrix like Bobby Green before he went to sleep. That’s how f*cking good it was. But you have judges who don’t know f*ck about fighting, and they see a big scary black man throwing f*cking big punches, and they’re like ‘oh man, that’s scary. That’s scary, he won the fight.'”
Strickland also discounted the facial injuries he had following the bout. “I’m f*cking white, alright? F*cking fall beats me up. There could be cold weather. Cold f*cking weather will damage me. The moment the seasons f*cking change it looks like I did a five round f*cking fight.” From there, Strickland suggested the black skin gets “harder” in the cold, before sarcastically suggesting that the loss was the result of racism in the sport.
As for UFC Vegas 67 opponent Nassourdine Imavov, Strickland had more to say about his heritage than his fighting.
“If we’ve learned anything about the French, what are the French best at? Giving up. I haven’t really watched him fight. I know he likes to bang, he throws big punches, but he’s still f*cking French man. That’s a hard thing to move past. There’s a lot of history of cowardice to move on from when you’re f*cking French. Maybe he’s going to prove a statement, maybe he’s going to say his country has finally left the cowardice behind, but I don’t f*cking know. Only thing the French are good at is having fairs and giving up and losing fights. But we’ll f*cking find out, maybe he’s different.”
And that, ladies and gentleman, is yet another Sean Strickland media day. Watch the full UFC Vegas 67 media day appearance by Strickland above.
