Sean Strickland did not manufacture his beef with Khamzat Chimaev, but he may have hallucinated it.
On Saturday night, Strickland added another remarkable win to his résumé, reclaiming the middleweight title with an upset win over Chimaev in the main event of UFC 328. Before the fight, much was made of the heated rivalry between the two, with UFC CEO Dana White even saying their feud was one of the most intense in UFC history, and Strickland doesn’t regret a thing.
“I sell fights,” Strickland said
at his post-fight press conference. “Look at the UFC, how f*cking boring it is. Really, the UFC is so f*cking boring. Do you even know half the [roster]? Other than Alex [Pereira], and he doesn’t even talk. He’s just big and scary. That guy just knocks everybody out. But other than Alex, it’s f*cking boring.”
Strickland and Chimaev certainly sold this fight, with their pre-fight press conference being one of the most-viewed in UFC history. But their beef did not last. Even before the bout, Strickland and Chimaev touched gloves and seemed to be in good spirits, and afterward, they hugged it all out, with Chimaev even wrapping the middleweight title around Strickland’s waist. But Strickland says that’s just what happens after sharing the field of battle with someone.
“There is something, unless you’ve experienced it, you just don’t know what it’s like,” Strickland said. “When you go and fight another man, your soul is just exposed. When you’re f*cking bleeding, and he’s bleeding, I want to quit; he wants to quit, we don’t want to be there, you just have this level of respect for one another. It transcends race, religion, nationality, country. It’s something that you just don’t know. You kind of become someone’s brother after you and him try to die, win or lose.”
Of course, not everyone agrees. Some fans viewed their behavior before and after the fight as a sign that Chimaev and Strickland were never as antagonistic toward one another as they portrayed, merely playing the beef up to draw interest in the fight. Strickland rejects that entirely.
“At the moment, the guy kicked me in the balls! What the f*ck!” Strickland said.
“I don’t like to be threatened. And maybe it’s just who he is as a person, but when he was in the gym, he was really threatening. He had that threatening demeanor. And maybe it’s that little man inside of me, but when you threaten me, I want to f*cking murder you. I want to kill you. And maybe he didn’t take it that way. Maybe it’s just his Chechen sense of humor, but always in the gym, he was trying to punk me. Where I was like, ‘Let’s go spar,’ and we would never spar.”
That being said, Strickland also recognizes that he’s not the most stable person, and did allow that it’s possible all of his issues with Chimaev were made up … inside his own head.
“I could have manufactured the whole situation in my head, to be honest,” Strickland added. “There’s times when you’re mentally not well, you’ll have interactions with people, and sometimes your brain thinks something else happened. … So, there’s a chance that I just hallucinated that entire interaction with Chimaev.”
Hallucinated or not, it seems like Strickland won’t have to deal with Chimaev again anytime soon. After the fight, Chimaev told UFC CEO Dana White he intends to move up to 205 pounds, and Strickland thinks that’s a great idea for his new brother in arms.
“At the end of the day, I heard he said he might want to move up to 205, and he should,” Strickland said. “If that weight cut is killing you, go to 205, enjoy life. It’s way easier competition.”
Strickland, meanwhile, now once again has the onus of defending the middleweight title, and first up seems like a rematch with Nassourdine Imavov, which the champ is ready to accept.
“I truly believe in UFC rankings,” Strickland said. “I think they f*cking matter, and I hate when guys jump them. So, if that’s what the UFC, that’s the rankings, that’s who it is. Let’s go!”
