Midnight Mania! Rogan Raves Over Tireless Strickland

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UFC color commentator Joe Rogan may not be working UFC 297, but he’s a fan of Middleweight champion Sean Strickland, who will take on Dricus Du Plessis in the main event tomorrow night (Sat. Jan. 20, 2024) from Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Strickland appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in July 2023, prior to dethroning Israel Adesanya and taking over the championship mantle.

Strickland’s upset over “Stylebender” shocked a wide portion of the MMA community, as Adesanya was heavily favored and had just regained his belt in dramatic fashion. In the immediate aftermath, many questioned if something was wrong with Adesanya, if he was fighting too often or perhaps overlooked Strickland.

Rogan doesn’t believe there’s any truth to that idea. Instead, he thinks that performance was just evidence of Strickland’s talent.

“I was very impressed,” Rogna explained on a recent podcast (via Josh Evanoff). “He’s a big guy man, there’s a thing about being confident and delusional. Or, not respecting your opponent and you know, I don’t know if that’s what happened with [Israel] Adesanya and Strickland. I just think Strickland’s that good, I really do think [so].”

A big question ahead of his first title defense opposite “Stillknocks” is how the South African will fare across five rounds. He has yet to go beyond the third inside the Octagon, and though his nose being fixed is allegedly going to be a boon to his conditioning, we have seen him fatigue previously.

Strickland, meanwhile, can push an incredible pace. Rogan thinks the reason that Strickland never grows tired is because of the mass amounts of sparring in training, which allow him to throw volume at an unusual rate.

Rogan continued, “He never gets tired … I’m very interested to see who prevails. The Abus Magomedov fight, I think that fight was one of the most impressive fights of Strickland’s fights. Abus comes out in that first round like a bat out of hell. But, he just gassed out, and he gassed out at the end of the first round. I think Abus was just so used to taking guys out, he thought he could just put it on Sean, and he was hitting Sean with f—king fire. That dude’s good man, but Sean just wilted him, just wilted him.”

“He doesn’t get tired.” Joe Rogan concluded his praise of Sean Strickland. “When you have a guy who spars as much as Sean. The bulk of Sean’s training is sparring, and he spars hard. He’s so accustomed to that, that’s really like a fight all of the time.”

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