Toronto, ON — The Sean Strickland who arrived at Wednesday’s UFC 297 media day, complete with what amounted to a babysitter in tow in a frankly vain effort to keep his language, if nothing else, in check, was a very different creature from the Strickland who last appeared in Canada.
In 2018, then-welterweight Sean Strickland was full of “yes Sir, no Sir” answers when addressing what little media was on hand for a Fight Night event in Moncton, New Brunswick.
Cageside Press was one of those media outlets, as it was again in Toronto.
One of the smallest UFC cards in recent memory, barely over 6,000 spectators watched Strickland put away Canadian Nordine Taleb by TKO in the second round on October 27, 2018. Likely less; the American was still years away from his current star turn, and was at best a mid-card fighter. His placement in the night’s line-up reflected that.
Strickland had entered off a loss, and admitted that he was both “so afraid of losing” and “afraid of failure” in previous fights that it had hampered his success. The Taleb bout was the last fight of his UFC deal at the time, which a magnanimous Strickland confirmed with a “yes sir.”
If there were cracks in the façade, they were few. “I was just a punk kid who was angry, and then I got pushed into fighting,” Strickland let slip at one point. The biggest clue came as he walked out of the room, suggesting after the cameras were off that he’d had a history with racism. “Did he just say he used to be in the KKK?” one media member wondered aloud— not quite, but Strickland would later openly admit to being kicked out of school for a hate crime.
In 2021, Strickland was far more up front about his past. “I was so angry I actually went through this weird neo-Nazi, white supremacist phase when I was younger and I got kicked out of school for hate crimes, like all this crazy sh*t. I was angry and I had a lot of f*cked-up influences in my life that it felt so good to f*cking hate something,” he told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour.
Fast forward to 2023. On Wednesday, Strickland lashed out at MMA Fighting’s Alex K. Lee, who put the reigning middleweight champ to the question for previous homophobic comments. Strickland then went off on what has become one of his patented, meandering rants, likening the question about homophobia to supporting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Let me ask you something, are you gay? Are you gay? Are you a gay man? If you had a son and he had a son who was gay, you’d be like ‘aww man?’ You don’t want a grandkid? You’re a weak f*cking man, dude. You’re part of the f*cking problem. You elected Justin Trudeau when he seized the bank accounts,” spit Stickland. “You’re just f*cking pathetic. And the fact that you have no f*cking backbone as he shut down your f*cking country and seized bank accounts, you ask me some stupid sh*t like that? Go f*ck yourself, move the f*ck on, you f*cking coward.”
Strickland’s not exactly a political scientist, to say the least, and he certainly isn’t a keen observer of Canadian politics, though pointing out there hasn’t actually been an election since the Trudeau government unilaterally seized bank accounts following the trucker protests in Ottawa during COVID isn’t really the point (for the record, the Canadian PM is trailing badly in the polls with an election fast approaching, perhaps deservedly so). But if Strickland is even half right about anything, it’s mainly a sign that a broken clock is still right twice a day, not of any deep insight.
No, the point is, Sean Strickland decided to take the mask off, since the veneer was already wearing thin. He let it slip during his rivalry with Israel Adesanya, but whether it’s Dricus Du Plessis’ jabs about the abuse the champ suffered as a child, or just having more leeway with a gold belt over his shoulder, Strickland was, well, full Strickland this past week. What was under that mask wasn’t pretty, but it’s worth asking how we got here, from a polite, humble-sounding Strickland in 2018 to one who can’t but help say something offensive during each and every media appearance.
To hear Strickland tell it, that 2018 edition of himself was disillusioned with the sport, contract soon up for renewal, and considering taking a job in a trade — welding, to be precise, he told us in Toronto. And he was, quite frankly, putting on airs.
“A lot of it was like where I came from. So I came from being a white trash, shaved head, kicked out of school for a f*cking hate crime, I came from being such a piece of sh*t. So it’s like when ever I got in front of a camera, you look at your peers. You look at the guys at the time who where the champs, and they carried themselves so well, and they wore f*cking suits. And you’re like ‘I want to have money, I want to distance myself from who I was.’ So I really tried to fit that image, and I f*cking hated it, man. Every time I wore a f*cking suit I felt like a c*nt.”
Dropping the suits and maintaining an act of being a decent human being might have been an option, but Strickland felt out of place regardless. “I felt like I didn’t belong, I felt like I didn’t fit. And I f*cking tried; I thought I’d make more money that way but f*cking apparently not.” After a motorcycle accident left him with a severe leg injury (“I’m still missing sh*t in my leg,” said Strickland), the plan was to “come back for the check and just go be a welder or some sh*t.” Only, the Taleb win was the first of six straight victories. “It just f*cking worked out, man.”
Strickland added that he found it “freeing” to not have to pretend to be a superstar. Though he might have more accurately said “behave” like one, because for all his faults, Sean Strickland has begun to hit star status.
If you’re waiting for the American History X-style journey to self-discovery and improvement when it comes to the UFC’s reigning middleweight champ, you will likely be waiting a while. Sean Strickland’s biggest character arc at this point is that he’s slightly less racist than he used to be. As a selling point, it’s not much. He’s no Ed Norton. Arguably, he’s traded being a racist neo-Nazi for homophobia and misogny. Not exactly an upgrade.
He’s still very, very angry, just at different things these days. The media, the political left, the gays, the transfolk.
The UFC is not likely to punish Strickland, as the CBC pointed out earlier today in front page opinion piece. Dana White has always been loathe to curtail the speech of his fighters, at least since the UFC Athlete Code of Conduct was all but thrown out the window a few years back. The province neither, for those wondering about things like fines from the commission — Hon. Neil Lumsden, who serves as Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport for Ontario, told Cageside Press on Friday following the UFC 297 ceremonial weigh-ins that “I’ve been around sport a long time, and Dana White runs the business, and I’ll just leave that to the UFC.”
For someone who has previously processed a desire to distance himself from the angry youth he once was, it’s still just a tiny bit shocking to see the utter lack of self-awareness from Sean Strickland. His condemnation of Colby Covington, who whose MAGA-inspired character is only a step or two shy of Strickland’s own persona, is equal parts baffling and downright silly.
The difference between the two is, Sean Strickland seems to actually believe what he’s preaching. Covington, as is abundantly clear by now, is playing a character, even if he doesn’t play it particularly well.
The ride to the top for Sean Strickland the fighter was not without its bumps in the road— the motorcycle accident, the bizarre decision to stand in front of Alex Pereira for just a little too long. The ride to redemption for Strickland the human being feels like it’s barely left the station. Thus far, Mr. Strickland’s wild ride is something of a broken amusement park attraction, stuck on the same old loop going nowhere. If he holds onto the belt, and his job, long enough, and finds a desire to actually grow, maybe we’ll get to see actual change, no matter how dubious the possibility might be. It’s likely to be a bumpy ride for a while longer however. A very bumpy one.
