It took Strickland ten years to earn his BJJ black belt, and just three seconds to toss it in the trash can.
Sean Strickland is so unimpressed with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu these days that he’s thrown his black belt in the garbage.
A new tweet from the UFC middleweight champion has video of Strickland tossing his hard-earned ranking in the bin.
“Over 10 years of my life wanting a piece of fabric,” he wrote in the caption, seemingly disgusted with his past self who cared so much about the distinction.
— Sean Strickland (@SStricklandMMA) December 23, 2023
The posting is par for the course from Strickland, whose social media accounts are full of bizarre behavior. If he isn’t using duct tape to fix his broken UFC belt, he’s holding people who wandered onto his property at gunpoint. In the past he’s talked about his disdain for grappling, and we’ve seen him refuse to grapple (to disastrous results) in fights against Alex Pereira.
His latest anti-BJJ rant went down at UFC 296, shortly before he was ejected from the building for brawling in the stands with Dricus Du Plessis. “Tarzan” was seated near Jiu jitsu master Craig Jones during the Tony Ferguson vs. Paddy Pimblett fight, and started heckling the gentle art.
“Strickland literally goes live on Instagram and he’s yelling out ‘Jiu jitsu doesn’t work!’” Jones recounted on his YouTube channel. “And he’s yelling at David Goggins, ‘Goggins, tell him to stand the f— up!’ And eventually Goggins starts repeating what Strickland is telling him.”
“And when Goggins starts doing that, Strickland switches the camera and he puts it on me and Volkanovski, and he’s like ‘Guys, tell ‘em, Jiu jitsu doesn’t work. It’s fake. It doesn’t work!’ He’s saying all this s—. Unfortunately he deleted the live , but his immediate presence was already pretty f—ing chaotic.”
Strickland refused to grapple against Pereira and refused to grapple against Adesanya. At this point we believe his renunciations of Jiu jitsu are legit, for better or worse. Let’s see how that plays out for him against Dricus Du Plessis on January 20th at UFC 297.