UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland is not a fan of Colby Covington’s manufactured persona.
Last month, Covington kickstarted a feud with Strickland, saying that he “would love to slap around” the 185-pound titleholder and labeled him a “pathetic excuse of a human being.”
We’ll just tip-toe around the irony in that statement.
Strickland and Covington are similar in that they are both proud Americans, staunch conservatives, and love to exercise their right to free speech. However, there is one glaring difference that seems to separate them. That being the fact that Covington’s MAGA-loving character is exactly that — a character — while Strickland prides himself on being 100 percent authentic, for better or for worse.
“Yeah, unlike Colby Covington, the fraudulent man himself,” Strickland told ESPN. “He’s just fraudulent. I think to be a UFC fighter, it is a sense of entertainment, WWE. But you want to base your character on authenticity and then you have somebody like Colby, who is a fictional persona that he’s created when he’s not trying to fall on Trump’s d*ck.”
“It is the most cringeworthy sh*t,” Strickland continued. “It’s so f*cked that Trump left the arena while he was giving his speech. It’s like watching the ugly girl get rejected at a party. You feel bad for the guy at this point. Don’t worry, Colby, he knows your name” (h/t MMA Mania).
Strickland is set to defend his middleweight title for the first time since claiming the crown with a dominant showing against two-time titleholder Israel Adesanya in September. ‘Tarzan’ will square off with No. 2 ranked contender Dricus Du Plessis in Saturday’s UFC 297 headliner at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
Watch the full interview below: