Shortly after Bryce Mitchell’s “Hitler was a good guy” clip began making the rounds on social media, Eric Nicksick pulled it up on his phone and walked toward Sean Strickland. They were in the winding down stages of training for his UFC 312 title fight with Dricus du Plessis, whom Strickland at one point, in the lead-up to their first encounter in early 2024, promised to kill should he delve into his traumatic childhood as source material to sell the fight. Nicksick, the head coach at Xtreme Couture, showed Strickland the viral clip, in which Mitchell casually mentioned that Hitler might’ve made a pretty good fishing companion.
“We were at practice and I showed it to Sean, and he made that eek face, like, ‘Oh, maaan.’ We were dying,” Nicksick says. “He was just staring at it with his eyes all big — I mean, we were dying. I found a meme that I meant to post with it, but I was like, ‘This sh*t even made Sean Strickland cringe?’ That’s how bad it was.”
That can’t help but be funny because, well, imagine Strickland cringing at somebody crossing the ever-shifting line of decency, thinking they’d gone too far. The man who wore a shirt to a press conference in Toronto for his first fight with du Plessis that read, “A woman in every kitchen, a gun in every hand.” The man who made misogyny the sport within the sport in MMA, and who went through a neo-Nazi phase of his own in his adolescence, idolizing the characters in the movie “American History X.” Who fantasized openly about killing an opponent in a fight, while voicing strong condemnations about gays, transpeople and otherness.
If Bryce Mitchell can make Sean Strickland blush, that’s as shocking as Luka Doncic being traded to the Lakers. It’s a thing that should’ve been impossible. Yet if there’s one thing that’s interesting about this 2025 version of Strickland coming for the title compared to the 2024 version who was defending it, it’s that the world has changed around him. Attitudes have changed. The tolerance for intolerance appears to be undergoing a revival. Mitchell got a very strong public reprimand from UFC president Dana White for his “stupidity,” but that was as far as it went. He wasn’t cut or suspended, as many thought he should be. The one name that White tossed out as a comparison to Mitchell’s loose cannon moment, which got shrugged off into the expansive softholds of free speech?
None other than Sean Strickland.
Mr. Hopscotch when it comes to those same lines of decency.
It’s why Strickland, as good as he is as a fighter — the fighter with the greatest strike rate in UFC middleweight history — has been a complicated public figure. The last time he fought in Australia, at UFC 293 against the then-champion Israel Adesanya, he arrived like an affront to the fight game. Unstable, unruly. Perhaps unhinged. UFC had to brace itself by giving him a title shot at all, unsure what disasters lay in wait once a hot mic was stuck in his face. Yet by the fifth round of that main event, he had morphed into a kind of cult hero. The Australian fans were cheering his every punch, roaring as his monumental upset of the Oceanic champ became clearer, the way the fictional Russian crowd embraced Rocky Balboa in his fight with Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV.”
Even his emotional post-fight interview brought them out of their seats. “Am I dreaming,” Strickland said, fighting back tears. “Am I going to wake up? Somebody hit me. Oh my God you guys, never in a million years did I think I’d be here.”
“Izzy was kind of weird though, man,” Strickland himself told me about that change in atmosphere. “All he had to do was say, ‘I’m happy and grateful for the part of the world that gave me a shot of life,’ but instead Izzy was like, ‘F**k them, I’m a Chinaman.’ I mean, it is hard to root for Izzy.”
Strickland sees things how he sees things.
Yet he doesn’t want the eyes to soften when looking at him. Strickland is a rogue figure who loves to make fighting an extension of a political minefield. He wants his red flags to wave, and he makes sure the wind catches them just right so they do.
If there’s one thing interesting about this 2025 version of Strickland coming for the title compared to the 2024 version who was defending it, it’s that the world has changed around him. Attitudes have changed. The tolerance for intolerance appears to be undergoing a revival.
“He does it to himself,” his coach Nicksick says. “You can’t wear a t-shirt saying, ‘Every woman in the kitchen,’ and then go to a press conference and not think that you’re going to get questions directed about your shirt or the LGBTQ community and all this stuff. He goes into these press conferences thinking that the conversation’s going to be about the fight and everything else, but you wear a shirt that’s going to direct it to politics? I mean….”
Nicksick loves him. “In the gym, Sean’s just one of the fellas,” he says. The coach has been loyal to Strickland the whole way, and often the voice of reason when Strickland expresses his point of view. The angel on the other shoulder. Nicksick accepts Strickland for who he is, though he says that doesn’t mean he agrees with his beliefs. Strickland is a grinder who puts in the hours. He is a deeply passionate student of the game who listens to coaching. He is a loyal teammate who shows up to prepare and corner the lesser knowns in the gym, no questions asked. He’s also the insecure champion who struggles to believe he could be worth it, which Nicksick sees.
And just like the rest of us, Nicksick is also a guy who sees Strickland out there saying wild things.
“I know Dana likes that he’s able to speak his mind, but I mean, Dana thinks one thing, and I know Hunter [Campbell] thinks another,” Nicksick says. “Because I’ve been on those text messages with Hunter going like, ‘Hey dude, can you tell him?’ And I’m like, ‘Tell him what?’ I mean, if it was me, I just wouldn’t set up interviews for him. I just wouldn’t. I would not even put him in a…”
Here Nicksick chuckles at the absurdity of the thought.
“I wouldn’t put a microphone in front of him.”
Sean Strickland the fighter is a hard-to-solve force of nature. To the casual eye, he wins by onslaught. Forward-moving pressure and volume. “Death by a thousand paper cuts,” as Nicksick says, similar to a Nick Diaz, yet he also doesn’t get hit all that much. Outside of a couple of fights, including the one in which Alex Pereira knocked him out in 2022 and the fight he got caught with a spinning kick from Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos in 2018, he generally dominates the striking exchanges. Skilled is a word that applies, yet it’s a reluctant descriptor for a guy who appears so willing to goon it up. Even in that first fight against du Plessis, he won the stat sheet, out striking the South African in every round but one.
It was a clash of heads that opened a deep gash over his eye — a cut that required eight stitches into the muscle — that gave the fight a skewed visual. That and du Plessis’s ability to mix in some timely wrestling, which ultimately kept Strickland on the outside of the scorecards. A split decision loss. It’s been a tricky camp to navigate, because in Strickland’s mind he won. Yet to believe that is to invite complacency into the workroom at Xtreme Couture, which is a hell of a way to treat a mulligan. While building him up, Nicksick and company have needed to convince him he lost.
“He keeps going back to, ‘Oh, I won that fight,’ which I agree with him there, but it’s also like, ‘Don’t feel like Dricus isn’t going to make improvements either on his end,’” Nicksick says. “We’ve been trying to keep him on that razor’s edge of, I feel the same, I don’t think we need to blow up the game plan and start all over, but I also think that you have to give credit where credit’s due and Dricus did enough to win that fight.”
If you played a drinking game where you swig every time Strickland says “f***” talking about that first fight, you’d be wasted before a point is ever made.
“No, man, I just got to be f***ing better,” Strickland says. “I got to put a little bit more pressure on. I got to come forward a little bit. I need to f***ing … let’s just say I was at 90%, I got to milk that 10 more percent out. I just got to f***ing be better going into a fight. I got to f***ing want it more. I got to just f***ing be better. And that’s kind of where the door’s shut. You’re talking about these hard fights, where so much of it is like, just f***ing be a f***ing man. Don’t be a f***ing p***y. Die for what you want. F***ing, that’s at the highest levels and the highest skill level a lot of times — it’s don’t be a f***ing p***y.”
Strickland’s spartan backdrop for video interviews at his home has two things: An American flag and a framed version of Constitution on his walls. No pictures of friends and family and pets. No fun colorful paintings, no UFC belt, no posters. Just the basics. America gets the space to itself. America is on his mind a lot. He compares other countries to America. Australia, which he talked about before visiting there in 2024, gets compared. China. New Zealand. Mexico. While going after a reporter at UFC 297 in Toronto, he made sure to light up the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the process. No government official is free from catching strays whenever Strickland comes calling.
Which is more than you think.
He’s one of the only MMA fighters who’s fought on six different continents. The dude is a traveling evangelist, preaching the book of Strickland. You talk to him about fighting, and he strays into the tenets of his beliefs as if the fight itself isn’t interesting enough. When you mention a love/hate relationship with the fan base, he cuts you off right there.
“Nobody hates me,” he says. “What you have in the media is you have the small minority pushing these crazy f***ing policies that no one … I mean, look at what [U.S. President Donald] Trump won. He won the entire f***ing — most of America. You have these small cesspool cities. Can I be an a**hole? Can I say things that are offensive? Could I put a little bit of extra heat on? Sure. But end of day, most people would agree with me on most of my beliefs, they just can’t say it.
“They just can’t f****ing say it.”
Here Strickland takes a moment to kiss his dog, who has come into his room. He apologizes for the intrusion and scratches the dog’s ears before sending him back on his way. Domestic Strickland looks like your father or your brother, a loving pet owner not afraid to show emotion. Where were we? Oh yes…
“I joked in an interview, I was like, ‘Yeah, I hate the gays and I’m a little mentally ill,’” he says. “But I don’t hate the f***ing gays. And you can tell they just f***ing got all clammed up. I can’t go there. It’s like, no, dude, you can go there. You could f***ing joke. You’re not persecuting me. You could say something f***ing funny. But it’s like people are so afraid in this f***ing … people are so afraid in this part of the world that they just get canceled and shut down that they cancel themselves. They cancel themselves.”
Sean Strickland has things on his mind, and he’s going to talk about them. The UFC can caution him to tone it down (which they have). UFC Chief Business Officer Hunter Campbell can ask those nearest him to try to mute his impulses (knowing damn well they can’t). And fans can love or hate him.
He’s still going to let you know.
Smarter than Bryce Mitchell. Darker than Colby Covington. Nowhere near as off the rails as Conor McGregor.
For a prolific swearer, he’s simply run out of f***s to give.
“That’s one thing, there’s no bulls**t with the guy,” his training partner Johnny Eblen says. “He’s very outspoken. With Sean, what you see is what you get. And it’s hard to come by that nowadays with social media and all these people putting up fronts like they’re this good person and whatnot. Sean is literally just what you see is what you get. And it’s just hard to come by nowadays.”
Strickland, who is once again the betting underdog as he heads down under to Australia, doesn’t think he’ll get the same treatment in Sydney for his rematch with du Plessis.
“I think Dricus will have a great reception as he should,” he says. “Man, the guy’s a f***ing dog, bro. He f***ing fights his ass off.”
Will he say something crazy if he recaptures the middleweight title? Insensitive? Mean? Will a second title run make the UFC’s palms sweat, especially with Mitchell’s lowering of the bar? He’s a wild card. You just never know. But from a perspective of thick-skinned perseverance, he is something to behold. He has overcome everything from the six losses on his pro record to a deeply psychologically damaged childhood that he admits — for better or for worse — shaped him into who he is. When I asked him about where he gets the drive, it’s not a common response.
“I just think being f***ed up,” he says. “It’s just being f***ed up. You’ve got to think, man, throughout my day, I have a great life, but you don’t have anybody to — there ain’t no therapist. I don’t believe in therapy, but you go to the gym and you’re around people that you’re ready to f***ing die with on a daily basis and you’re f***ing bloody. It just brings you such an inner peace after you get done.”
Which is where Nicksick and his team in Las Vegas have helped guide him, by being a steady presence throughout his career.
“I think with understanding Sean, it’s more with a level of empathy rather than trying to change him,” Nicksick says. “We all come from different backgrounds, and I think abandonment issues were his biggest thing, in making sure that he knew that we weren’t going to leave him high and dry. I think that’s a lot of what he’s gone through in his life.
“So sometimes it’s just simple things of explaining to him like, ‘Hey, we’re here for you, we love you, but these are the things that you can be better on,’ and just communicate with him that he’s a great person. Really boiled down, he’s actually got a really good heart. It’s just the things that I think what he says in public just don’t really help him. You know? I mean, it just certainly backfires.”
Strickland wants to even the score against du Plessis, and that’s what’s being sold for UFC 312, yet he admits that being a champion didn’t really suit him.
“No, it doesn’t,” he says. “I think just the low self-esteem in me, I can never really quite accept anything. Anything good that happens to me, I’m always like, ‘I don’t even like this.’
“I don’t know, man. It’s a belt. It comes and goes. It’s like our lives are so short that you’ve got to find joy in things that aren’t the virtual world. I mean, at the end of the day, this entire industry that we’re in, we’re just a little face on the screen, and you got to just find joy and peace in your own life. If you’re always looking for validation and you’re always focusing on failing, you’ll just be a miserable f***. Because we all fail, we all lose, we all retire, and you just got to find f***ing peace in yourself.”
And in this case, when you cut through the tumult, that seems very much the mission.
