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Strickland lost in the first round to Pereira at UFC 276.

Sean Strickland suffered a brutal KO at UFC 276 a few weeks ago. The American middleweight, who had surged up the rankings lately, was stopped in his tracks by Alex Pereira—a man who now seems set to challenge old foe Israel Adesanya for the UFC middleweight title.

Strickland talked a lot of smack leading up to this fight, with both Pereira and Adesanya. However, during the fight with Poatan, he looked leagues below the Brazilian when it came to the striking game.

Many are wondering if Strickland, a far more experienced mixed martial artist, would have had better success trying to take Pereira down. However, by his own admission, Strickland really wanted to ‘stand and bang’ with one of the most feared strikers in the sport right now.

Former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen believes Strickland’s eagerness to fight Pereira on the feet was a gift to fans. And for that reason, he deserves some credit.

“I can’t give Sean too hard of a time in fairness because the fight was so short,” Sonnen said (ht MMA Fighting). “We don’t know what was to come. We’re only looking at a couple minutes of fight here. Sean’s going forward, Sean hadn’t quite got down to cutting him off yet, the elevation change, some of these things could have still been in the plan and it got cut short.”

“Can we give Sean a pass? I mean, Sean was trying to do what the audience really wanted to see,” continued Sonnen. “The audience really wanted to see this fight but if we knew Sean was just going to go out, tackle him, put him in a realm he had never been in, all the sudden they lose interest a little bit. They wanted Sean to stand and trade. That’s you guys. You were the audience. That’s what you wanted, he went out and gave you what you wanted. Is it really fair that we kick him now?”

It certainly seems true that Strickland, by getting KO’d, gave a lot of fans what they wanted to see. The divisive fighter has taken steps to raise his notoriety over the past two years, usually through posting inflammatory and bigoted statements online.

Strickland has also seen his relevancy rise through ‘leaked’ sparring videos which show him going rough, and sometimes downright irresponsible, with his training partners.

Aside from the outside the cage stuff, Strickland was on an upward trajectory thanks to a six-fight winning streak that stretches back to 2018. During that run he beat Uriah Hall, Jack Hermansson and Brendan Allen.

Don’t use Jurassic World Dominion star Sam Neill’s name to slander fellow New Zealander Israel Adesanya, or he’ll come for you on social media.

Israel Adesanya has been taking abuse from all sides since his lackluster win over Jared Cannonier at UFC 276. But one person who definitely didn’t throw shade at ‘The Last Stylebender’ is fellow New Zealander and Jurassic World Dominion star Sam Neill.

Wait, what?

Let’s rewind a moment: UFC 276 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas was a star studded affair featuring many celebrity actors and athletes. Amongst those was Jurassic World Domination star Chris Pratt, who was cageside to promote his latest Amazon Prime show, The Terminal List.

Adesanya dominated Cannonier on the scorecards, but there was little excitement in his performance. Following the bout, Pratt went on ESPN’s UFC 276 post-fight show and said “I’m not a fan of coming out with all that talk and then putting on a little bit of pitter patter. I’m like ‘Come on, man! Cash on that!’ You gotta cash that promise of being so bad ass.”

Pratt apologized whole-heartedly after Adesanya called him out over the critique, and this is where ‘Sam Neill’ stepped in with another alleged shot at Izzy.

“Instead of threatening a superstar actor how about you get some tips from him to make your next outing actually entertaining,” a tweet credited to Neill read.

The only issue: Sam Neill didn’t write that, and he’s not happy at whoever did.

“I am completely furious some idiot plonker faked a tweet supposedly from me involving Adesanya,” Neill wrote on his real and verified Twitter account, the only place we go to for Sam Neill news. “I admire Israel enormously – he does us proud every time”

It’s no surprise that Neill is a fan of Adesanya. Both men are from New Zealand so it didn’t take long for the actor to realize internet tomfoolery was afoot and take action.

The win over Cannonier advances Adesanya to 23-1 (12-1 UFC) and marks his fifth middleweight title defense. Those hoping for more action from ‘The Last Stylebender’ are already looking forward to his next fight against Alex Pereira, who happens to hold two wins over Adesanya in kickboxing (one of which was a brutal KO).