Sean Strickland is the UFC middleweight champion for the second time in his career after defeating Khamzat Chimaev in the main event of UFC 328.
For the longest time leading up to the bout, Sean Strickland was selling the rivalry between himself and Chimaev as hard as he possibly could. It got to the point where people felt as if there could be a full-on riot, but just before the fight started, the two were laughing with one another, touched gloves twice, and made it clear that this was all a bit of a show.
Sean Strickland says controversial things both in and outside of fight week, but the humbleness he showed by apologizing for some of his comments proves that perhaps this is far more of an act than fans realize. He’s an intelligent guy deep down, and he even said in the interview we’re about to reference that he enjoys the ‘WWE’ style of promoting.
In the following quote, you can hear Sean Strickland be vulnerable in a way that we haven’t really seen before.
Sean Strickland gets humble
“Let me tell you, every fight I’ve ever had, 30-40 minutes before the fight I think I’m gonna lose, every fight. I just go in there and fight. Yeah, (I’m being serious), I’ve never thought I was gonna win a fight.
“You’ve just got to be the man you wanna be, just because you think, like, how do you prove you’re enough? You do it. I’ve never thought I would ever win a fight.”
“We all kind of have this voice in our head like, you don’t think there’s a voice in my head that sees a big angry Chechen with a beard, you see him just run through everybody in the division. You don’t think I have a voice in my head saying, ‘oh s—, oh s—‘, we all have that voice.
“You just sack the f— up and be the man you want to be.”
Quotes via Bloody Elbow
Who knows, maybe we’ll get more of the same in his next fight, or maybe Sean will be turning a corner.