Sean Strickland made a lot of promises ahead of his rematch against Dricus du Plessis at UFC 312.
In the weeks and days leading up to the event, Strickland vowed to fight to the death with plans to bring a war to Sydney, to leave no doubts after losing a heartbreaking split decision in their first encounter. But in the end, Strickland lost in even more lopsided fashion this time around and he never really changed much about his approach other than absorbing a lot more damage.
Following the fight, the former middleweight champion faced a lot of criticism for a lackluster outing including UFC analyst Din Thomas erupting while saying that “Sean Strickland is not who he says he is” and “he’s not the guy who’s going to go to the death” when he fights.
Retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown can’t help but wonder if Thomas or anybody else upset at Strickland just haven’t been paying attention this entire time.
“A lot of people are dogging Sean for not ‘fighting to the death’ or going to war or whatever,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “What I want to know is when did we start listening to what fighters say? Particularly what Sean Strickland says?
“He’s an obvious good fighter, an elite fighter. What he has done has got him to where he’s at. Why would you suddenly change it up and why would we expect him to suddenly change that up in the fifth round or fourth or whatever? This is what he does. This is who he is.”
As much as Strickland might get the crowd riled up by declaring that he’s going to fight to the death, Brown knows that’s nothing more than promotional bluster.
The bigger factor to consider here is Strickland’s history where he’s largely displayed the same style in almost every fight he’s had in the UFC. Brown says anybody who actually believed that he was suddenly going to throw down in some kind of wild brawl has no one to blame but themselves for what actually unfolded at UFC 312.
“We know what he’s going to do when he goes in there and fights,” Brown said. “It’s a safe style and it’s a good style to win fights on decisions. Again, this is what the UFC has done — I’ve talked about this many times — what they have done better than any sport in history is they have magnified the personalities of those competing. We totally buy into this and we love it. That’s what the UFC markets.
“The UFC never once marketed Sean Strickland’s fighting style but they absolutely marketed who he is as a person. With social media these days, it magnifies it even more and the UFC is just going to magnify that more and more. There are a lot of guys like this.”
Brown doesn’t fault Strickland for making crazy claims before he competes because that’s what most fighters do to get people interested enough to plunk down $80 on a UFC pay-per-view.
To suddenly get upset that Strickland pretty much fought how he always fights just shows that some folks aren’t paying attention.
“What’s he supposed to say?” Brown said. “Do you expect him to hype up the fight by saying, ‘Yeah, I’m going to go in and jab him for five rounds, everybody tune in!’ No, he’s trying to hype the fight and get everybody interested and it works.
“Everybody buys into that propaganda or rhetoric or whatever and everybody buys in and wants to watch. Now everybody is talking about it. Everybody is so shocked he didn’t go to war and try to be willing to die for it. When did this become his thing?”
Perhaps this isn’t what some fans or analysts want to hear but Brown knows most fighters spout all sorts of nonsense to drum up interest in an event.
It’s nothing new and Strickland didn’t do anything wrong by under-delivering on outlandish claims made during interviews or a pre-fight press conference.
“We’ve got to take out the things that they say,” Brown said. “That’s hard to do because there’s so much of that PR out there about these guys and we get to know them. You don’t see this kind of stuff in other sports. We base it off stats and objective measurable numbers. This sport, everybody buys into the personalities and the clown show for some people. The Colby Covington clown show. Things like this.
“[Sean Strickland] may believe in his mind that he fights to the death. If it was an actual fight to the death, it was a no time limit, he might be capable of doing that, and I don’t doubt that he would. But this is a sport with rules. A lot of what we can see is objective. Objectively, he has never fought that way. Why would we expect him to suddenly fight that way?”
