Once the name Conor Mcgregor was synonymous with trash-talking in the UFC. Of course with time the Irish began losing his edge inside the Octagon and wasn’t seen as much. However, a little-known fighter named Sean Strickland was preparing for making some literal strong ‘statements’ and shake the MMA world.
In his early days, Sean did not get much ability to display his talking prowess as he mostly fought in prelims and undercards. But after a bike accident, he had to abandon fighting at the Welterweight division and moved to middleweight. This is where he kept winning and climbing the ranks and his antics became visible.
One of his famous bouts was against Jack Marshman where he continuously mocked his opponent with banter during the fight. At some points, he even tried to teach his opponent how to block like in the famous Holloway vs Ortega bout. But the main exposure he got probably came from the YouTube channel named Schmo.
Sean’s brash, unapologetic style of going no hold bars on anybody and everybody attracted a lot of fans. In the meantime, his style of constantly calling out Women and members of the LGBTQ community for their stupidity while simultaneously trying to act as an ally was deemed hilarious by many.
Of course, he had competitors in the trash-talking department from the likes of Sean O’Malley and Paddy ‘The Baddy’ Pimblett. But Sean lost a lot of credibilities when he tried to play his controversial decision against Petr Yan off. Fans sometimes like their fighters when they talk some bullock but they don’t usually like dishonesty.
Paddy Pimblett too had a similar issue where his clear loss against Jared ‘Flash’ Gordon was actually ruled in his favor by either incapable or dishonest judges. Paddy tried to shove all criticism off by addressing any kind of negative opinion as the statement of a hater.
Ariel in his show poked fun at Strickland by asking his age and claimed that he had done more for this sport of MMA than many can even imagine. He even claimed that Sean was just a mere child in 2001 when Ariel was advocating to normalize combat sports amongst the public.
