- Sean Strickland is currently the most controversial fighter on the UFC roster
- He has threatened to kill opponents, punched a fan and sparred with trolls
- Strickland’s UFC career is littered with wild stories – here’s a look at them
UFC champion Sean Strickland and controversy go together like hand in glove and the American was embroiled in another sexism and homophobia scandal this week.
Unleashing vile tirades is nothing new for the 32-year-old but he still has the capacity to shock, despite most fans – hardcore and casual – knowing he both courts infamy and is willing to do whatever pops into his head regardless of the consequences.
Few believed the wild Strickland would ever make it to the very top but he is front and centre for UFC 297 in Toronto this week as the reigning middleweight champion.
He has a massive platform now but far from changing the way he acts, it is amplifying his behaviour.
Here, Mail Sport takes a look at the flashpoints of a wild life and career of the UFC’s most polarizing character.
Escaping prison time at 18
Life for Strickland could have taken a turn down an altogether darker path at multiple junctions along the way.
At the age of 18, he was facing felony charges in the US for assault with a deadly weapon, though he says the weapon in this case was his fists after he beat up two men as a teenager.
Strickland explained: ‘I was arrested on bulls**t charges, but it was two felonies, and I had a lawyer saying, you’re going to jail for like a minimum of three years. I was like 18, 19.’
‘I was accused of violent crimes using a deadly weapon. What was the deadly weapon you ask. Nothing I hit two people once. In California violent crimes or felony ban you from owning a gun for 10 years.’
Strickland went to jail for a short time while his case was being processed and has since spoken about what it was like: ‘You walk in [to jail], and if you’re white, which you know, I am a white man, the white supremacists come up to you and give you the tour… They say, well, here’s the rules, they help you make your bed.
‘They lay down the rules. Here’s the thing, you can’t go to the bathroom while we’re having dinner, and if you shower with a black guy, you gotta fight him…
‘I’m like, listen, man, I’m not really racist… He goes, let me stop you right now, if you don’t join us, you’re pretty much on your own. You’re kinda f****d… I walk past the segregation of black cells, and you have all of these motherf*****s grabbing the bars, threatening me, telling me they are going to f*****g kill me… What I’m trying to say is I’m not made for prison.
‘Luckily in the end, they took the deal, my lawyer was f*****g shocked. I would have done at least a year to three years in jail.’
Fighting – and biting – his rival in a crowd scrap
Putting Strickland and the man who he fights this Saturday – Du Plessis – two rows from each other in the crowd at UFC 296 last December was not a wise move.
UFC president Dana White later admitted it was his fault for signing off the seating plan and after the fighters had clashed at a press conference over Du Plessis bringing up Strickland’s traumatic childhood, they had a brief scuffle before being separated in wild scenes in Las Vegas.
Strickland has since claimed that if he’d have been carrying a gun he might have shot Du Plessis and even admitted to biting him in the melee.
‘If I had a (expletive) gun on me at that UFC [crowd] fight, if I had a gun on me bro, there’s a chance bro… there’s a chance,’ he said on his podcast.
‘I don’t wanna throw away my life for something dumb. And that’s why I’m always like, “Hey guys, let’s just be nice to each other.” The best thing I could do was 12-6 elbows to the back of the head, if I wanted to do the most damage.
‘If you look in the video, right at the very end, I went to bite him. If you slow down the video you’ll see me grab his head and I went to take a chunk out of him. I’m almost positive I got a little bit of hair in my teeth.
‘The reason why I didn’t fully commit as I did it, I was like “Sean there’s no coming back from this, the moment you take a piece from him.”‘
Strickland has spoken emotionally about having suffered alleged physical and emotional abuse as a child, saying he used to stay under his parents’ bed in case his father tried to followed through on threats to kill his mother.
He threatened Du Plessis, saying if his childhood was brought up again he would ‘stab’ him.
‘Dude listen, Dricus, we’re gonna go try to murder each other, but if you bring that s**t up again, I will (expletive) stab you,’ he warned.
‘If I go to Canada and you bring that up, guess what? I’m gonna go to jail, they’re gonna deport me and we spent eight weeks of training for no (expletive) reason.’
‘Almost killing someone’ in California
Two years ago, Strickland detailed an incident in California in which he says he resisted the urge to shoot someone who had pointed a shotgun at his head because there would have been witnesses to the crime.
He said: ‘For those who are wondering how I almost killed a man. I am at this gathering and I am probably running my mouth being an idiot.
‘Next thing I know, this guy f*****g puts a shotgun onto my head. So my dumb a** punches him in the face. He falls down I take the gun and at that moment I am contemplating if I shoot this mot*******r in the head is there any legal defence to it.
“Sadly, I looked around there are f*****g witnesses I thought if I killed this man I’m gonna go to prison. So I unload the gun I give it back and I walked away.’
Offensive press conference tirades
Sexism, homophobia and even racially charged comments have been a feature of Strickland’s media appearances during his time with the UFC.
While it seems he often makes controversial statements for effect and does so with a grin on his face, there are other times when it feels more malicious.
This week he singled out a journalist who asked if he stood by a tweet he wrote that said: ‘If I had a gay son I would think I failed as a man to create such weakness….. If I had a w**** for a daughter I’d think she just wanted to be like her dad lol!!’
He then unleashed a furious tirade at the journalist, going on to say: ‘You are an infection, you are the definition of weakness, everything that is wrong with the f*****g world is because of you.’
Of the Nigerian-born Kiwi former champion Israel Adesanya, who he beat to claim the title last year, Strickland previously said: ‘Izzy, the true Chinese, they probably want to bring a real African back to the championship. When he says “Look at the color of my skin”, did that really happen? This f*****g clown, this f*****g loser, they need to revoke your black card… I don’t even look at you like a black man, you like the f*****g Chinese…
‘I don’t know how he hangs out with black buddies and represents Africa… there’s a skit of him saying “Look at my skin, look at my skin color, you might think I’m a black man from Africa, I’m wrong, I’m from China.”‘
Strickland’s closest friend is black UFC middleweight Chris Curtis and his training partners, of all races, have only ever painted a picture of a loyal and accommodating team-mate without prejudice.
But Strickland’s often deliberately provocative public comments paint a different picture of him to the public.
He hit the headlines two years ago for saying: ‘We need to go back to taking women out of the workforce, and maybe that’s where we f****d up.
‘We need to put women back in the kitchen, only one man needs to be working, so as a collective man group we need to elect someone that’s gonna put women back in the kitchen, one man working, raise the wages, and build a f*****g wall.’
While there’s no doubt the attention, negative though it is, boosts Strickland’s pay-per-view numbers and earnings, it does not feel as though he is completely inventing this character of intolerance and at least believes some of what he says.
Holding a trespasser at gunpoint
Last November, Strickland held up a trespasser at gunpoint after spotting him hiding on his property, later revealing that the man was ‘beating up a girl and fled drunk from security’ before ‘wrecking his car’ near his driveway.
He said: ‘The guy was drunk stomping out a girl, a security guard seen it, he jumped in his car and drove off. Security followed him, hit a curb, completely shredded his tire, drove on the rim for a while then jumped out and tried to hide at my house.
‘I initially though he was stealing my car… He was arrested.’
Strickland caught the trespasser hiding in between two cars parked in his driveway before pointing a gun to his head, as shown by a camera attached to his Ring doorbell.
Punching a fan on Bondi
Prior to Strickland’s massive fight with Adesanya in Australia, he put the entire event in jeopardy during an incident at Bondi Junction.
‘Initially, I thought the guy was coming up for a photo,’ he told Fox Sports. [Then he said] ‘Izzy is gunna f*** you up.
‘Boom, right in the guts,’ he says, describing his response. ‘I’d only been in Australia a day and already I’d committed an assault.
‘If you wanna come up to me and run your f*****g mouth, I’ll smack you like I smack anybody else. Uppercut to his stomach. Then I walked away. But if I see the guy again, man, no problems… I’ll thank him for not pressing charges.’
Dana White later said of the incident: ‘Going into this… I knew what this week was going to be like. We’re prepared for it.
‘Yes, we have people around him now, so he won’t be punching people in the stomach anymore.’
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Will Griffee
