Kairouz Bros<\/a> in a recent interview that he actually suffered a shoulder injury ahead of his second fight with du Plessis at UFC 312, only agreeing to accept that bout date on the UFC\u2019s insistence. Du Plessis went on to again defeat Strickland, this time by a much more definitive decision.<\/p>\n\u201cBefore the Dricus fight, I was f*cking riding with [motocross athlete] Axell Hodges and I broke my shoulder,\u201d Strickland said. \u201cSo I was in Colombia getting stem cells on my shoulder and they hit me up for the fight and the thing with the UFC, you don\u2019t say no. They are pimps. You don\u2019t say no the masters. So I was kind of backed up into a corner taking that fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo taking this time off, letting my body heal has been amazing. This shoulder feels f*cking great. I do miss fighting and I miss performing, but it\u2019s been nice to be a fat, lazy, piece of shit for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n
The time off Strickland refers to is a six-month suspension he recently served for a post-fight altercation at a Tuff-N-Uff event in loss Vegas this past June. Strickland was in the corner of fighter Miles Hunsinger and after Hunsinger was submitted by opponent Luis Hernandez, Strickland entered the cage and attacked Hernandez, with victorious fighter having allegedly taunted him. The suspension ended in December and Strickland already has his first fight of 2026 booked, a main event clash with fellow middleweight contender Anthony Hernandez at UFC Houston on Feb. 21.<\/p>\n
While Strickland was on the sidelines, du Plessis went for a third title defense, but was defeated in one-sided fashion by Khamzat Chimaev. Du Plessis struggled for five rounds as Chimaev\u2019s relentless wrestling neutralized him.<\/p>\n
Strickland gave his analysis on why wrestlers like Chimaev and UFC welterweight champion Islam Makhachev are so effective.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already called it in the game with \u2018DDP,\u2019\u201d Strickland said. \u201cI\u2019ve been training with these little Chechyans and whatever Dagestanis my whole life, I\u2019ll give you an example. So you\u2019ll train with these guys and it\u2019s a thousand percent off the gate. They take you down and there\u2019s a voice in your head that\u2019s almost like, \u2018F*ck. This guy doesn\u2019t get tired. He doesn\u2019t stop. He doesn\u2019t quit. But then the moment you push back and you just keep fighting the good fight, all of a sudden they just start breaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see that with Gilbert [Burns], you\u2019ve got a welterweight that just didn\u2019t let [Chimaev] rag doll him and then next thing you know, you weren\u2019t a wrestler anymore. So they have a very unique way of grappling and unless you\u2019ve experienced that, it\u2019s just something you\u2019re not used to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strickland has been a popular name to call out in recent months, with the expectation that a win over him could lead to a title fight with Chimaev. He understands why the other contenders are coming after him and sees his fight with Hernandez as a legitimate No. 1 contender fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good thing about \u2018Fluffy,\u2019 the guy\u2019s on, like, a 50-fight winning streak,\u201d Strickland said. \u201cYou\u2019re next in line. He\u2019s like the American Chimaev. That\u2019s the fight. That\u2019s the next title fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Strickland knows not to cross the boss. After winning the UFC middleweight championship in September 2023, Strickland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-394837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}