Chael Sonnen Says Strickland Deserves a Pass For UFC 276: “he gave you what you wanted”
Sean Strickland’s schtick came to a stunning end when Alex Pereira destroyed him in a single round of their UFC 276 fight. UFC analyst Chael Sonnen thinks anyone who criticizes Strickland, who appointed himself one of the finest kickboxers on the UFC roster, for this performance, should give him a pass.
“Should we give Sean Strickland a pass?
You know I’m giving him one, right? You know what a believer I am in Sean Strickland. I feel terrible for him, I really do.
Sean did not do the one thing I needed him to do to make my prediction true that Sean Strickland can deal with this guy, including in the striking. Sean Strickland can go out and kickbox with this guy.
Sean Strickland can beat this guy. Sean Strickland can be the No. 1 contender. For those things to be true I only need one thing, I need the threat of a takedown. I need for Sean to not come out and make it clear we have an unwritten agreement, and the agreement is we’re gonna stand here and we’re gonna trade punches and kicks. I need the threat of a takedown.”
Sonnen argued that Strickland could have relied on his wrestling to neutralize the persistent threat of Pereira’s vicious striking. His choice to instead stand and bang with the former two-division GLORY kickboxing champ led to his obliteration in the Octagon, but that shouldn’t be held against him. After all, the audience wanted to see a pair of hard-headed fighters “stand and trade”.
“I can’t give Sean too hard of a time in fairness because the fight was so short. We don’t know what was to come. We’re only looking at a couple minutes of fight here. Sean’s going forward, Sean hadn’t quite got down to cutting him off yet, the elevation change, some of these things could have still been in the plan and it got cut short.
Can we give Sean a pass? I mean, Sean was trying to do what the audience really wanted to see. The audience really wanted to see this fight but if we knew Sean was just going to go out, tackle him, put him in a realm he had never been in, all the sudden they lose interest a little bit.
They wanted Sean to stand and trade. That’s you guys. You were the audience. That’s what you wanted, he went out and gave you what you wanted. Is it really fair that we kick him now?”
Do you agree with Chael Sonnen? Let us know in the comments.
