Tag: Chris Curtis

Chris Curtis refuses to let Sean Strickland’s controversial views affect their friendship: ‘We disagree on a lot’

Sean Strickland and Chris CurtisDespite their vastly different personalities, outspoken middleweight star Sean Strickland and the much more reserved Chris Curtis have struck…

Sean Strickland and Chris Curtis

Despite their vastly different personalities, outspoken middleweight star Sean Strickland and the much more reserved Chris Curtis have struck up one of MMA’s most intriguing friendships.

Strickland and ‘The Action Man’ were both in action at UFC 297 in Toronto with the former suffering a razor-close split decision loss to Dricus Du Plessis, surrendering the 185-pound title in the process. Hours ahead of their entertaining five-round scrap, Strickland once again made headlines after being asked about his previous anti-LGBTQ comments during an appearance at the pre-fight press conference.

Strickland proceeded to roast the journalist who identified themself as an “ally” of the LGBTQ community.

Speaking about his friend’s often outrageous and sometimes vile commentaries during an interview with TMZ Sports, Curtis confirmed that there are plenty of topics that the two are far apart on.

“Me and Sean disagree on a lot,” Curtis said. “There’s a lot of things I’m like, ‘Nope, I’m not gonna back you on this one’ for one reason or another and it’s funny that people would be like, ‘You’re a bad friend.’ No, I’m a good friend. I’m not a yes man. I won’t be a yes man for anybody. I’ll call Sean on his bullsh*t the same way he’ll call me on my bullsh*t. Good friends don’t jump off a cliff right behind you.

“A good friend is like, ‘You’re a f*cking idiot for doing this, and here’s why.’ So I don’t have to agree with everything he says or does. There are some lines he crosses where I will step forward. We’ve had talks before about certain things like this personally offends me or trying to protect you from yourself and getting screwed over. But I don’t have to agree with everything he says. I’m a grown-ass man and he’s a grown-ass man.”

While Sean Strickland came up short in his outing in The Great White North, ‘The Action Man’ returned to the win column following a 15-minute slugfest with Marc-André Barriault. Curtis moved up one spot in the middleweight rankings as a result, landing in the No. 13 spot. He has alternated wins and losses in his last four Octagon appearances.

“If you only have friends that you completely agree with 100% of the time, you’re probably a pretty sh*tty [and] shallow person and I just whatever,” Curtis continued. “I don’t have to agree with him and in a way, I think our vastly different personalities keep each other more centered, but it is what it is. He’s a f*cking grown man. He’s gonna say sh*t I don’t agree with. I’m gonna say sh*t he doesn’t agree with. It doesn’t matter. Grow up.”

Chris Curtis offers his take on Sean Strickland’s stunning UFC 293 victory: ‘We all knew he could win’

StricklandTraining together at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, Chris Curtis probably knows more about Sean Strickland’s style and skill than anyone. Still, that didn’t stop ‘The Action Man’ from being absolutely stunned by his dominant performance against Israel Adesanya at UFC 293. Strickland delivered perhaps the performance of a lifetime in his first shot at […]

Strickland

Training together at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, Chris Curtis probably knows more about Sean Strickland’s style and skill than anyone. Still, that didn’t stop ‘The Action Man’ from being absolutely stunned by his dominant performance against Israel Adesanya at UFC 293.

Strickland delivered perhaps the performance of a lifetime in his first shot at a world title. Stepping in on relatively short notice against the man many consider to be the greatest middleweight of all time, ‘Tarzan’ dictated everything that happened inside the Octagon for 25 minutes en route to scoring one of the biggest upsets in UFC title fight history.

Following the contest, Adesany’s coach at City Kickboxing, Eugene Bareman fielded questions on his behalf and suggested that ‘The Last Stylebender’ simply had an “off night.” However, Sean Strickland’s teammate, Chris Curtis, had a much different take while discussing the UFC 293 headliner on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani.

“If you watch Sean spar anybody, it goes very similar to that,” Curtis said. “I’ve seen him spar a bunch of people. You can get better fighting against Sean, but every time someone has their first rounds with Sean, it goes exactly this way. Where people are like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ So everybody’s like, ‘Izzy looked off.’ I’ve seen this a thousand times. You can get better at fighting him, but when you initially run into him you are just confused.

“Everything he does is, on paper, wrong. It’s not the way you’re supposed to move. He moves weird, he throws weird, he kung fu blocks, he’s really good at shutting down the things you’re supposed to be good at. You hear at one point Izzy say, ‘I can’t find my jab.’ It’s hard to find your jab against Sean because he creates so much random traffic with his jab or when you start jabbing he’s parrying weird, he’s kung fu blocking.

“In most combat sports, especially kickboxing and boxing, everything is predicated off of your jab. Everything sets up with your jab, so when he just takes that away from you, no, it’s not there, you can’t out-jab Sean. He’s going to win that battle. He’s either going to counter you or just make your jab pointless. Look at Izzy, he’s throwing jabs, he’s getting his arm blocked up high, a few times he’d throw and Sean just bats his arm up and away. … So all that bullsh*t about Izzy looked different, no, you look confused like I looked confused and everyone else looks confused when they spar Sean because it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ No, that’s bullsh*t, I’ve seen this happen for seven years and this is what he does” (h/t MMA Fighting).

Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that the UFC never intended to book Sean Strickland to challenge Adesanya for the middleweight title in The Land Down Under. Originally, the plan was to have the division’s top-ranked contender, Dricus Du Plessis, step in two months after his stunning second-round knockout against Robert Whittaker at UFC 290. Unfortunately, Du Plessis was unable to commit to an eight-week notice after suffering a toe injury in July.

The promotion seemingly scrambled to find anyone other than Sean Strickland, but in the end, it was Adesanya who took credit for pushing the UFC into booking the fight.

“Sean is probably the toughest human being that I’ve met when it comes to fighting,” Curtis said. “I love fighting, he’s probably the only person I genuinely know who enjoys fighting more than I do. I knew he could win this fight, I didn’t think he would make it look that easy. I don’t think he thought that he would make it look that easy.

“We all knew he could win, we were like, ‘Sean’s tough as nails, he’s patient, he’s aggressive, he can do this. He’s got to make it an ugly war and get Izzy to fight a dumb fight.’ No one ever thought that he would out-kickbox Izzy. I’m watching and I’m like, ‘This is not what you trained, oh my God.’”

Chris Curtis Was Expecting Sean Strickland to Try and Wrestle Adesanya at UFC 293

Given his status as a 7-to-1 underdog, many fight fans, and Curtis himself expected Sean Strickland to put his ground game to work considering it has been a bit of an Achille’s heel for ‘The Last Stylebender’ in previous outings. Needless to say, nobody expected ‘Tarzan’ to beat Adesanya in a kickboxing bout. And certainly not as decisively as he did.

“Honestly, the pressure, yeah, but we really hoped he would wrestle,” Curtis said. “Watching Sean spar, he would shoot, but he was still just kickboxing people, fighting like Sean, so you knew that was going to be a part of it but you’re hoping that he’d mix in wrestling. Make it hard, drag him down, wear him out.

“Everybody’s like, ‘Is he going to wrestle?’ I was like, ‘He’s trained to wrestle, but it’s Sean, so he’s going to get in there and…’ I said he’s probably going to in there and have a kickboxing match. Lo and behold, he went in there and he freaking won a kickboxing match against Izzy. I don’t think anyone saw that coming.”

Strickland has never been particularly known for his knockout power. With 20 career fights in the UFC, ‘Tarzan’ has only secured four finishes by way of knockout. But that didn’t stop Strickland from nearly ending things in the first after landing a massive right hand that sent Adesanya crashing to the canvas.

“People don’t realize, Sean actually hits hard,” Curtis said. “It’s not like “he’s going to knock you out in one punch” hard, but it’s enough thudding to where it stuns you. So when Izzy went down I went, ‘OK, he’s down, he’s landing shots’ and part of me was like ‘Oh my God if he finishes Izzy in one round, the world’s going to implode.’

“You’re excited and it’s crazy but then you’ve got to remember the Pereira fight and I’m like, ‘Bro, don’t take a bad risk here.’ You’re kind of like, ‘Win the fight, win the fight, but please don’t screw up here.’ And it’s crazy because I’ve never seen someone bat a thousand like that, he just did everything right. I don’t think he made a mistake that fight.”

Paulo Costa floated as potential opponent for Sean Strickland after UFC 293 title win: ‘I know they had beef’

Paulo Costa floated as title fight opponent for Sean Strickland they had beef UFCWhile an immediate championship rematch between Sean Strickland and former champion, Israel Adesanya has been widely floated in the fallout from UFC 293, the newly-minted champion’s teammate, Chris Curtis, has claimed Strickland should fight incoming UFC 294 feature, Paulo Costa in his first attempted title defense.  Strickland, who headlined his first pay-per-view event under the […]

Paulo Costa floated as title fight opponent for Sean Strickland they had beef UFC

While an immediate championship rematch between Sean Strickland and former champion, Israel Adesanya has been widely floated in the fallout from UFC 293, the newly-minted champion’s teammate, Chris Curtis, has claimed Strickland should fight incoming UFC 294 feature, Paulo Costa in his first attempted title defense. 

Strickland, who headlined his first pay-per-view event under the banner of the Dana White-led promotion last weekend, managed to turn in a one of the most jaw-dropping title upset victories to boot, defeating two-time champion, Adesanya in a one-sided unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 49-46) success in Sydney, Australia.

And in the immediate aftermath of the shocking upset triumphs, Strickland has been lined up to fight Adesanya in the immediate future in a rematch turnaround, particularly by promotional leader, White.

As far as Adesanya’s head coach is concerned, a rematch between his City Kickboxing student, and newly-crowned titleholder, Strickland could take place as soon as December at UFC 296, or in the opening months of next year.

Could Sean Strickland defend his title against Paulo Costa next?

However, according to middleweight contender, Curtis, the Xtreme Couture staple has claimed his training partner, Strickland and Brazilian favorite, Paulo Costa should share the Octagon next.

“Honestly, I really want to see him (Sean Strickland) fight Paulo (Costa),” Chris Curtis told MMA Fighting. “I know they had beef, and I know Sean really wanted to fight Paulo. He really wanted to beat him up and there was some talk going on there, and Paulo found a reason not to fight.” (Transcribed by MMA News)

The one-time middleweight title challenger has his hands most definitely full at the time of publication despite Curtis’ backing for a title fight with Strickland, with Costa set to feature at UFC 294 next month, welcoming undefeated Chechen finisher, Khamzat Chimaev back to the middleweight limit and active competition to boot.

Would you like to see Paulo Costa challenge Sean Strickland for the title? 

Video – Ian Garry pleads with Chris Curtis to stop sparring after suffering a rib injury

ian garryFootage shows UFC 185lber Chris Curtis attempting to fight on after suffering a rib injury while sparring Ian Garry. Garry and his team have been churning out social media content for some time now, documenting the Irishman travelling around the world and training at different gyms. In the latest chapter, this time in Miami, Florida, […]

ian garry

Footage shows UFC 185lber Chris Curtis attempting to fight on after suffering a rib injury while sparring Ian Garry.

Garry and his team have been churning out social media content for some time now, documenting the Irishman travelling around the world and training at different gyms. In the latest chapter, this time in Miami, Florida, Garry enlisted the help of the well-experienced middleweight, Curtis for sparring.

However, during the training session, Curtis appeared to injure on of his ribs, claiming he had separated it. After a short break, the American quickly attempted to get straight back to action much to dismay of Garry.

“Stop being an idiot. BRO! I’m gonna jump the f**k out of the ring,” Garry said.

“Come on, it’s a rib, Layla [Garry’s wife] make him fight” Curtis responded.

“You’re too tough for your own good. You’re fighting soon,” Garry replied.

“I got six weeks,” Curtis said attempting to reason, “Ian buddy come on, finish the round”.

“You’re going to come in the next one. Trust me,” said Garry. This is where you being smart is going to get you to the f*****g top five, the belt, all of that shit. You don’t need to be tough here.”

Curtis is currently booked to face Anthony Hernandez on September 16 as part of a UFC Fight Night card.

Ian Garry takes on Geoff Neal at UFC 292

Sparring Curtis does present a similar fighting style of Garry’s next opponent, Goeff Neal. The pair will face one another in just 10 days time on the main card of UFC 292, headlined by Aljamain Sterling and Sean O’Malley.

It will be the biggest test of Garry’s young career and will also be a chance for the 25-year-old to break into the welterweight top-10.

Who wins, Ian Garry or Geoff Neal?

Chris Curtis vs. Nassourdine Imavov ruled a no contest following second-round clash of heads – UFC 289 Highlights

Chris CurtisChris Curtis was unable to see following an accidental clash of heads in his featured prelim bout with Nassourdine Imavov at UFC 289 on Saturday night. ‘Action Man’ returned to the Great White North intent on getting back into the win column after coming up short against Kelvin Gastelum in his last outing. In the […]

Chris Curtis

Chris Curtis was unable to see following an accidental clash of heads in his featured prelim bout with Nassourdine Imavov at UFC 289 on Saturday night.

‘Action Man’ returned to the Great White North intent on getting back into the win column after coming up short against Kelvin Gastelum in his last outing. In the early going, things were not going well for Curtis who struggled to close the distance against the much taller and lengthier Imavov. The first round saw Imavov put his wrestling skills to work, muscling Curtis down to the canvas and narrowly locking in a rear-naked choke as the first round came to a close.

Round two saw both fighters on their feet and exchanging strikes, but as Imavov moved in to clinch Curtis against the fence, their heads clashed with Curtis getting the worst of it. The referee immediately paused the action as Curtis began bleeding over his right eye. After a few minutes, Curtis could be heard repeatedly explaining that he could not see. As a result, Jason Herzog called a stop to the action and dubbed the bout a no-contest due to an accidental clash of heads.

Official Result: Chris Curtis vs. Nassourdine Imavov is ruled a no-contest following an accidental headbutt at 3:04 of Round 2.

Check Out Highlights From Chris Curtis vs. Nassourdine Imavov at UFC 289 Below:

Chris Curtis confronts Twitter troll ahead of UFC 289 return: ‘They never keep the same energy’

Chris CurtisChris Curtis had the unique opportunity to confront one of his Twitter trolls ahead of his return to the Octagon on Saturday night. ‘Action Man’ is set to square off with No. 12 ranked middleweight contender Nassourdine Imavov as the promotion returns to the Great White North for UFC 289. Emanating from Rogers Arena in […]

Chris Curtis

Chris Curtis had the unique opportunity to confront one of his Twitter trolls ahead of his return to the Octagon on Saturday night.

‘Action Man’ is set to square off with No. 12 ranked middleweight contender Nassourdine Imavov as the promotion returns to the Great White North for UFC 289. Emanating from Rogers Arena in Vancouver, the event is scheduled to be headlined by a women’s bantamweight world title fight as Amanda Nunes begins her second 135-pound title reign. ‘The Lioness’ will put her gold on the line against Mexican standout Irene Aldana.

Chris Curtis will go into his featured prelim bout desperately seeking a win after coming up short in two of his last three outings, suffering unanimous decision defeats at the hands of Jack Hermansson and Kelvin Gastelum. Ahead of his highly anticipated walk to the Octagon, ‘Action Man’ had the opportunity to confront one of his online haters and shared a video clip of their interaction on social media.

“Not every day, you get to run into one of your Twitter trolls. Lol, they never keep the same energy. But it’s fine. I love you guys, too. Man I love [Canada],” Curtis posted on Twitter.

Clearly, this online troll’s tune changed quite a bit when confronted by Chris Curtis face-to-face as would likely be the case with most keyboard warriors should they ever find themselves confronted by the men and women they criticize.

As one of the more active UFC fighters on social media, Chris Curtis is undoubtedly subjected to a fair amount of criticism online, but it’s nice to see the ‘Action Man’ take the high road instead of using it as an opportunity to assert his dominance over the outspoken fight fan. It’s also possible that ‘Action Man’ could be saving his pent-up frustration for his return to the Octagon on Saturday night.

Making his UFC debut in 2021, Chris Curtis scored three straight wins against Phil Hawes, Brendan Allen, and Rodolfo Vieira. Since breaking into the middleweight division’s top-15, Curtis has struggled to find the win column but did score himself an impressive second-round knockout against Joaquin Buckley in December. Curtis recently spoke about his return at UFC 289 in a LowKick MMA exclusive which you can watch below: