Sean Strickland choked out a fan on a Florida beach while visiting the state to help former Bellator champion Johnny Eblen prepare for his next fight.<\/p>\n
The UFC middleweight<\/a> champion, in town ahead of Eblen’s bout at PFL Austin, took a break from cornerman duties to grapple with a willing participant on the sand, according to MMA Mania. Video circulating on social media shows Strickland securing a choke and rendering the fan unconscious before releasing the hold.<\/p>\n Strickland helping Eblen ahead of PFL Austin card<\/p>\n Strickland has been in Florida working with Eblen, who previously held Bellator’s 185-pound strap before the promotion merged into the PFL ecosystem. The beach session appears to have been impromptu, with Strickland engaging the fan in a short grappling exchange that escalated quickly.<\/p>\n The champion has built a reputation for sparring and rolling with fans at public gyms and other informal settings. Monday’s incident follows that pattern, though most such encounters end before anyone loses consciousness.<\/p>\n Strickland remains scheduled to defend his title later this year. No date for Eblen’s PFL Austin appearance has been confirmed by the promotion.<\/p>\n Photo: MMAnytt \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/p>\n Original reporting:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Strickland choked out a fan on a Florida beach while visiting the state to help former Bellator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-769724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}