MMA champion Sean Strickland is the 21st-century ‘Cinderella Man’
Oliver Bateman
Before MMA fighters Sean Strickland and Israel Adesanya faced off in what would become an iconic fight for the UFC middleweight title at UFC 293 on Sept. 9, Adesanya dismissed the idea of even promoting the fight with Strickland, viewing him as an unworthy opponent. Yet, by the end of their bout, Strickland had decisively proved otherwise. Strickland’s unexpected title win over Adesanya is a moment in sport that even movies about fighters have rarely reached for the sheer dramatic payoff and personal triumph the moment represented.
In a sport dominated by flash and hype, Sean Strickland is an anomaly. Raised on the West Coast in a community he openly describes as “degenerate,” Strickland’s backstory is bleak. He attributes the high rates of deaths of despair in his community to its lack of opportunity and pervasive substance abuse. “If I wasn’t in the UFC, I’d probably be cooking meth in a trailer,” Strickland has repeatedly said in interviews, emphasizing the direness of the circumstances he escaped.
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Strickland’s childhood was marked by distressing episodes, such as his father’s recurring threats against his mother, with many nights ending with him threatening to murder her and melt her in a vat of acid. Strickland admits that these experiences fundamentally altered his brain’s wiring, making it difficult for him to transition into a more conventional life. While these struggles led him to extremist beliefs, joining an MMA gym at the age of 14 or 15 acted as a therapeutic catalyst, helping him reassess his worldview. Despite his upbringing, Strickland resists the labels of “victim” or “abused” and the mindset that goes with them. After he won the middleweight title, he quipped that he might owe thanks to his father for the abusive childhood that “made him a champion.”
While some fighters like welterweight Colby Covington adopt contrived personas to gain attention — wearing MAGA hats, taking selfies with Donald Trump, or firing guns in Instagram posts co-promoted by various conservative brands — Strickland opted for a different path. Known for his unpredictable behavior and seemingly unhinged interviews, his persona is authentic — a warped, exaggerated mirror reflecting an “ugly American” archetype. Yet this unpredictability is a calculated tactic, a cloak that hides a keen tactical mind.
Rather than explosive athleticism, Strickland’s fighting approach is a throwback, built around a textbook one-two boxing combination: a jab followed by a cross. These moves are executed with precision, supported by some of the best striking defense in the history of the UFC. His preparation mirrors his fighting style: meticulous, grueling, and devoid of shortcuts. Strickland has noted that his love for the fight is so deep-rooted that he actually fights to finance more training.
What sets Strickland apart even more in an industry teeming with thoughtlessly reactionary figures is his ability to confront and disown the racist ideologies of his youth while remaining nigh impossible to pin down politically. Strickland has been frank about a time in his life when he embraced evil. “I was just so angry, I actually went through this weird neo-Nazi white supremacist phase,” he recounted in an interview on The MMA Hour. His father’s erratic behavior and emotional cruelty contributed to that anger, driving young Strickland to undertake serious criminal activity.
At a young age, these ideologies seemed heroic, not because Strickland understood them but because they were tied to figures he looked up to. His worldview began to crack when he started training and meeting people from different backgrounds. “A lot of people who helped me out in my life, they weren’t white. Usually the white people in my life were dicks,” he said, describing a realization that led him to confront and eventually abandon his previously held prejudices.
In Strickland’s case, redemption came through exposure to different perspectives and the discovery of a constructive outlet for his anger. The film American History X, which initially fascinated him for its portrayal of a violent supremacist lifestyle, later served as a cautionary tale. Like the character Derek in the movie, who transforms while in prison, Strickland’s attitudes shifted fundamentally through his interactions with a more diverse community. Today, Strickland’s primary training partner and best friend, Chris “Action Man” Curtis, is a black middleweight who leans left in much the same way that the new world champion leans right.
Strickland started his professional career with the King of the Cage promotion, where he eventually became a promotional champion. But the road was not easy. Early on, he contemplated quitting the sport, even going so far as to plan a return to school for his GED. But a chance altercation and subsequent arrest led him back to the ring, initially just to make bail. A fight in South Africa turned the tide for him; Strickland has been in the game ever since. Despite a severe motorcycle accident in December 2018, he returned stronger, and his current stint at 185 pounds has been impressive.
Strickland has proved to be a formidable middleweight, transitioning from a solid but unexceptional stint as a welterweight. As a fighter and as a public personality, he keeps growing, but never into something easy to classify. He has been criticized, for example, for “xenophobia,” primarily when he’s talked about building a wall around the United States. Whether this is a good policy or not, if you listen closely to the punchy populist, it’d be hard to call his justification for these ideas a chauvinist or supremacist one; he has said he wants a wall so that native-born Americans might cease being “degenerates” and lest they be surpassed by workaholic immigrants who embody American values far better than his own dysfunctional family did.
The politics — whatever, exactly, they may be properly labeled — mix with the fighting, especially in his psychological gamesmanship. For his title fight against Israel Adesanya, Strickland went beyond mere preparation to try to build a fight that the then-champion, who saw Strickland as no threat, had little interest in promoting; he mocked Adesanya’s previous claims of kinship with China by donning an American flag-themed shirt that read “For the people, by the people.” However, Strickland’s love for America and Americans isn’t rooted in blind jingoism but a call for self-improvement he maintains not just for his country and himself but even his adversaries. During fights, he’s been known to yell at his opponents, including Adesanya during a lackluster final round, urging them to give their best.
The complexity of Sean Strickland is encapsulated not just in his gritty, relentless fighting style but in a life story filled with grim realities, personal evolution, and unexpected redemption. Strickland is not merely a good fighter but also a complicated human being pushing everyone around him to transcend their limitations, even as he shocks them by saying, and then carefully qualifying, many things that are beyond the pale of polite discourse. Now, with championship gold around his waist to complement his manic monologues, he is far and away the most compelling fighter in MMA.
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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work: oliverbatemandoesthework.substack.com