Sean Strickland has opened up about his troubling thinking as a youth when he went through a ‘neo-nazi phase’.
Strickland was on Ariel Helwani’s ‘The MMA Hour’ describing things about his past which included him having a white supremacist mindset. The UFC middleweight fighter has been in the MMA news a lot recently through his trash talking on his social media. He was outspoken about his feelings on transgenders in MMA, talking about murdering someone in a fight, and his fascination with going out to the desert with Belal Muhammad.
“I was really fucking angry,” Strickland told Helwani about his youth. “I was so angry I actually went through this weird neo-Nazi, white supremacist phase when I was younger and I got kicked out of school for hate crimes, like all this crazy shit. I was angry and I had a lot of fucked-up influences in my life that it felt so good to fucking hate something. I would walk down the street with like a knife or a rock hoping to kill somebody. And when I started training I’m like man, you’re just fucking angry.” (MMAMania)
Strickland’s last fight was against Uriah Hall back in July where he won via unanimous decision. He was booked to fight Luke Rockhold in an upcoming bout, but Rockhold was forced to withdraw from that fight due to an injury. It is great to see Strickland use that anger to fuel his career instead of such a ludicrous mindset that he once had.
“My grandfather was like this big piece of shit. When you’re a kid you don’t see that, you hero worship. He kinda just filled your head with crazy shit. You’re in seventh grade spouting off about Nazis, you don’t even know what the fuck that means. But you hear it from someone you look up to and that identity consumed me. Drawing swastikas walking to school, like I didn’t know what the fuck that was. Later my grandfather died and I kinda resented him for it. When you’re racist, you don’t get ahead in life. You’re fucked, man. There’s no privilege from being racist, so I resented him for a majority of my life.” Strickland added.
Strickland’s next bout is up in the air since Rockhold was forced to pull out. The UFC is still looking to find him an opponent for a fight in the near future.
What do you make of Sean Strickland’s past?