Sean Strickland rarely finds a line he won’t cross when trash talking opponents, but after Dricus du Plessis brought up his traumatic childhood in the lead-up to their fight, Strickland actually threatened to stab the middleweight contender ahead of UFC 297.
Despite getting into a brawl in the crowd at UFC 296, the fighters have largely settled whatever beef there was between them, with du Plessis conceding that he wouldn’t use Strickland’s past as cannon fodder to attack him again. Of course, Strickland has taken heat for accusing du Plessis that he went too far with those comments when nothing much seems out of bounds for the reigning UFC middleweight champion.
Strickland has attacked Ian Machado Garry and his wife. He’s made numerous sexist and homophobic remarks, oftentimes about other fighters on the UFC roster.
The way UFC welterweight Matt Brown sees it, Strickland has nobody to blame but himself.
“Guys like Strickland, he does cut deep sometimes,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “He pushes the limit, and to not expect that back is a little bit naïve. You try to go low on somebody — they’re going to go a little bit lower. That’s just the can of worms he’s opened.
“Whether there’s something out of bounds? In terms of the entertainment side of things, if it’s not entertaining, why are you saying it? We don’t want to hear it, so if you’re saying just to get under someone’s skin, it’s not my thing. I get why they do it too, but it’s not my thing.”
Brown understands how trash talk can spiral out of control when the situation involves two fighters who had a relationship beyond just being opponents. For instance, Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington engaged in a nasty war of words after they were close friends and teammates for several years.
When it comes to Strickland and du Plessis, they’re not friends and they don’t share any kind of past together, yet they’ve exchanged some really personal insults.
“It doesn’t really make sense to me because it’s not like these guys actually know each other,” Brown said. “Like, if Masvidal and Colby Covington start cutting low on each other, I’d get it. They were friends and they became not friends and they know each other well. I think I would kind of get that and it would make sense. But we’re talking about two guys from opposite sides of the planet, who are just talking s*** because they’re going to fight? It doesn’t make sense. Like, why do you hate the guy so much that you would cut that low?
“If you’re saying s*** that’s entertaining, I get it. Trying to fire him up, trying to get the fight hyped up. But you don’t even know this guy. You’ve never hung out. You’re not old friends. You never even trained together, so what’s the point? Now it just looks bad on the person saying it, and that’s again, when it goes from the entertaining to simply being low blows, it doesn’t make sense. It loses its entertainment value.”
Trash talk in combat sports is nothing new, but Brown saw a dramatic shift in how it’s done after Conor McGregor arrived in the UFC. The brash Irishman used trash talk like a stabbing weapon to go after opponents, and there were plenty of times it worked.
Perhaps the best example was McGregor’s consist jabs at Jose Aldo. The rivalry grew so heated that Aldo ended up charging forward like a bull at the start of their fight, and the heavy-handed McGregor laid him out with a brutal one-punch knockout in just 13 seconds.
Brown feels like a lot of fighters have tried to follow in McGregor’s footsteps, but even the outspoken former two-division UFC champion has struggled to really cut into his opponents lately without going low.
“Even Conor lost the creativity,” Brown said. “[Fighters say,] ‘I guess I’ve got to be even more extreme to get into this guy’s head.’ It’s just been a race to the bottom ever since.”
When it comes to UFC 297, du Plessis promised he won’t use Strickland’s childhood as a way to dig at him moving forward. He added that none of the trash talk — personal or not — really bothers him.
Brown believes much of the same, which is why he doesn’t really see the need to tear down opponents, but also doesn’t really care if they try to do that to him.
“I’ve had a lot of fights and maybe my mind is a little bit different, but someone can say just about anything to me and when I step in there, I’m not going to want to kill him worse,” Brown said. “I already want to kill him. It doesn’t really matter what you say. I’m going to go in there and do the best that I can to take your head off, period. I don’t really get that whole art of war mentality there, but I get them trying to do it.
“I would like to see it in a more tasteful manner because we are professional athletes. If you’re in street fights on YouTube, it makes more sense. You’re just some white trash people out there trying to talk s*** to each other. But we’re supposed to be the highest level professional athletes, and if you believe you are that good of an athlete and you’re good enough to win, you don’t need to cut that low.”
You must be logged in to post a comment Login