Appearing on The MMA Hour, UFC middleweight and teammate to Sean Strickland attempted to explain Strickland’s mentality in his ill-fated bout against Alex Pereira. For some fighters – himself and Strickland included – certain fights are more about pride than anything else.
““Sean is Sean, man. There was a clear game plan that we worked on in camp and went over. At the end of the day, Sean is definitely a live by the sword, die by the sword kind of guy, and even more so than getting a title shot, I think [what was] important to him was testing himself and seeing where he was, and a lot of people won’t get that.
But until you’ve been in there with some of the best in the world, you have people telling you you can’t do something. They won’t understand sometimes, I hate to make it sound like this, but you all say that financially, it should be money before pride. But as a man in fighting, often times you will see that your pride comes first, for better or worse.”
Curtis continued, pointing out that you simply cannot fight without some level of pride in what you do.
“You can’t fight without pride. You can’t be a high-level fighter without some sense of pride, and sometimes, to our detriment, we put that pride before everything else. But that’s what he chose to do, man, he wanted to test himself. He wanted to see, and it didn’t work out in his favor this time. It has most of the times, but this time, it didn’t. Sometimes, it’s more important to know than win. I’ll give him that. Fighters are different, man, but a lot of times, it’s more important to know than to win.”
Strickland’s strategy was widely ridiculed. He chose to stand and bang rather than grapple with one of the most frightening strikers in the sport.
“Sean’s a black belt in jiu-jitsu, and Sean’s a good grappler, and his wrestling is very good. So were like, stay connected to him, don’t trade in kickboxing range, drag him down, wear him out, beat him up or submit him. Honestly, I figured Sean would TKO him.
I figured he’d drag him down, lock up with him, drag him to the mat, let him get up, drag him to the mat, beat him up and beat him that way, which was the easiest path to victory.
But Sean was like, ‘F*** your kickboxing, I’m going to kickbox you.’ So Sean goes and does Sean, because there’s nothing else you can expect from Sean other than for him to be Sean.”
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