Sean Strickland: Pressure of Potential Title Shot Affected Performance at UFC Fight Night 200

Don’t let the split-decision outcome fool you: Sean Strickland was clearly in control during his victory over Jack Hermansson in the UFC Fight Night 200 main event.

However, Strickland’s five-round verdict was not the type of performance that launches a fighter into the next level of stardom. Strickland, who has garnered more than his fair share of attention for his off-color comments outside of the cage, admitted at Saturday’s press conference that the notion of headlining a UFC card with potential title ramifications got into his head a little bit.

“You know what it is, man? I let the pressure get the better of me,” Strickland said. “I knew I was better than him. You guys knew I was better than him. He was a guy that I should have, maybe not finished, but he should’ve been more bloody and messed up after the fight. But he wasn’t. That was because I took my foot off the gas. I just coasted through that fight. I don’t really even think I was trying that hard. I kind of sucked, but it is what it is. That’s what you get for being a p—y. No bonus for me.”

Regardless of how it looked, Strickland is now in the midst of a six-bout winning streak within the Las Vegas-based promotion, which puts him on the short list of contenders in the middleweight division. Strickland, who completed his current UFC deal on Saturday night, says some talks with promotion brass about a potential championship opportunity may have caused him to adopt a more conservative-than-usual approach against Hermansson.

“I’ve got a lot of fancy f—ers wearing suits, and they come up and talk to me about title fights and things of that nature,” Strickland said. “You hear that all the time and you start thinking, ‘Do I really want to risk getting knocked out when I can go for a title fight?’ So I let the fancy folks in the suits throw me off a little bit. But it won’t happen again.”

During the press conference, Strickland also revealed that he was offered the opportunity to fight Marvin Vettori at UFC Fight Night 196 when Vettori’s original opponent, Paulo Costa, said that he wasn’t going to be able to make the middleweight limit during fight week. Ultimately, Costa and Vettori agreed to meet at 205 pounds instead. It was a difficult situation for Strickland at the time and something he doesn’t want to revisit as he continues his climb through the middleweight division.

“Marvin Vettori, he’s a good buddy of mine. I acutally helped him train for Costa and Jack [Hermansson], I was his main training partner,” Strickland said. “That’s a fight I wouldn’t want to fight. They actually asked me whenever Costa drank too much wine and cookies, they asked me to take his fight on like a day notice…That situation I said yes, but just for what I’m making, I’d rather bow my head. I’ll let Marvin get another title shot before I fight him.”

As it stands right now, Strickland believes he’s one of the only fresh options in line for a title shot, provided that Israel Adesanya defeats Robert Whittaker in the UFC 272 main event next weekend.

“At the end of the day, if f—-ing Izzy wins, man, unless [Jared] Cannonier wins, he’s ran through the division. Come on, let’s get some fresh blood in. We don’t want to see another repeat. Let’s have one white trash motherf—-er take a crack at it.”