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Sean Strickland had a very eventful week in the leadup to Super Bowl Sunday. It started off right after the Republican caucus in Las Vegas, Nevada where former POTUS Donald Trump was making a speech. Just a few minutes into it, Trump gave Sean an extended shoutout and following the event, stopped in with the former UFC middleweight champion for photo ops and a mock staredown complete with a tiny bit of bobbing and weaving.
Sean Strickland beats up Sneako
The next day, Strickland would host an open sparring session with influencer Sneako. According to multiple reports, the two had worked out some rules before the sparring took place. The session was to be for one 4-minute round and Sean wouldn’t engage until the fourth minute. We got to see Sneako working around Strickland, throwing all manner of “punches,” none of which did anything at all to the UFC star.
Then, the fourth minute rolled around and Strickland and all his pent-up rage showed up at the party. He savaged Sneako to the point his corner threw multiple towels, all to no avail. By now, the influencer was bleeding from the nose and trying to run from Sean, who had to be all but tackled to bring a halt to the beating.
Sean would say the following about the incident via X (formerly Twitter):
“Lmao they act like I murdered a man… So a man wanted to fight and got beat up… so fucking what… that’s how you become a fucking man… Don’t be little him .. He took his ass beating like a man and will be better for it. Good job. I was impressed.”
Sean Strickland doesn’t like how MGK looked at him
Following that, Sean ended up at a Power Slap event where he would meet Machine Gun Kelly for the first time. When Strickland was introduced, the first thing he did was call MGK “weird” and then a “f—cking weirdo,” apparently very distressed that the musician dressed “like a f—cking vampire.” Let’s let Sean’s own words via his Youtube channel tell the story. (Transcript via MMA Fighting)
“I go and I meet the vampire, [Luke Trembath] introduces me to the vampire and I make fun of him. I’m like, ‘Dude, what are you f—cking wearing. Like, what the f—ck is going on here? How are you doing this?’ He looked at me and he didn’t laugh and he didn’t giggle, but he looked at me like, ‘Why is this guy with no respect talking to me like this?’ He looked at me like I was less than human.”
He would continue on, clearly becoming agitated over some perceived disrespect due to MGK remaining silent during the fighter’s tirade.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to f—cking humble you right now,’” Strickland said. “Then my girl got in the way and was like, ‘Chill the f—ck out,’ and then I was escorted out.”
“You guys don’t understand, these people at these slap fights, they’re not people. They’re influencers. I interact with hundreds of people. I go snowboarding. No fan ever has anything bad to say about me because I love you guys, but these people are not you guys. I can’t explain it until you interact with these people and you’re around them. It’s like they have a weird god complex, and when I’m around them, I just want to hurt them all to remind them you are just a human being, shut the f—ck up.”
UFC CEO Dana White was asked what his take on the altercation was and his reply was short and to the point. He almost seemed exasperated as he said,
“You can’t bring Sean Strickland around any other human beings. It has nothing to do with Machine Gun Kelly, it’s about humans.”
Did you talk about anything else besides Sean Strickland?
We also broke down six fights from this weekend’s UFC 298 card. While it’s not super stacked, the main card is very top heavy with excellent fights. The undercard is pretty underwhelming with just the featured prelim and Nakamura’s fights being the bright spots amid an ocean of regional-level talent. Here’s the fights we chose to make our predictions on:
UFC 298
- Alexander Volkanovski vs. Ilia Topuria
- Robert Whittaker vs. Paulo Costa
- Geoff Neal vs. Ian Machado Garry
- Merab Dvalishvili vs. Henry Cejudo
- Anthony Hernandez vs. Roman Kopylov
- Amanda Lemos vs. Mackenzie Dern
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