While many felt like Sean Strickland squandered his title shot against UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis at UFC 312, fellow middleweight contender Jared Cannonier had no issue with Strickland’s five-round performance.
In case you missed it, Strickland lost a lopsided decision to du Plessis last weekend in their rematch for the undisputed middleweight title. Strickland pulled his usual pre-fight antics by promising fight fans a war to the death only to come up considerably short when it mattered most. The former UFC champion did break his nose during the fight, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for not pulling the trigger and trying to find a way to finish the fight in the later rounds.
Many people — including Strickland’s head coach Eric Nicksick — have criticized Strickland’s performance over the past week. Fans are beginning to wonder if Strickland can ever be the balls-to-the-wall brawler that he claims to be. It has put a lot of pressure on Strickland to defend his lackluster title shot and try to save some face among his fellow middleweight contenders.
Fortunately for Strickland, not everyone is ridiculing him for a subpar performance at UFC 312. Cannonier, who will headline this weekend’s UFC Vegas 102 fight card against Gregory Rodrigues, didn’t have too much of an issue with Strickland’s five-round dud. That’s because Strickland did break his nose and even though he didn’t “die” inside of the Octagon he still fought hard.
“Congratulations to both competitors for making it out not as concussed as everybody hoped they would,” said Cannonier during UFC Vegas 102’s media day earlier this week (h/t MMA Junkie). “‘To the death.’ Everyone keeps repeating it and throwing it in Sean’s face. It was a scrap as expected. DDP fought as expected, Sean Strickland fought as expected, and we’ve got ourselves another championship fight in the books.
“I thought he went in there and competed for five rounds in a world-title match, and came up on the short end of the stick with a broken nose,” Cannonier said of Strickland. “People wanted him to sustain more damage than that. We live in a sadistic world where people want to see other people go through some sort of pain and take pleasure out of that.”