Strickland candid after UFC 328; admits fear of fighting Chimaev

UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland admitted that he was not free of doubts before his fight at UFC 328.

On Saturday, the American defeated Khamzat Khimaev and reached for his second career middleweight belt. This came as quite a shock to many fans, as the undefeated “Borz” remained the favorite. Strickland himself has never been a favorite of the MMA community, but with this victory he once again proved his worth.

Although before the fight few gave him a better chance, the American withstood the pressure and broke the experts’ predictions. Afterwards, however, he revealed that the road to this victory was not at all as certain as it might have seemed from the outside.

Strickland: I always think I will lose

In the About Last Fight podcast on the UFC’s post-game channel, Strickland spoke candidly about what was going on in his head just before he entered the octagon.

“Let me tell you, every fight I’ve ever had, 30-40 minutes before the fight I think I’m gonna lose, every fight. I just go in there and fight. Yeah, (I’m being serious), I’ve never thought I was gonna win a fight. You’ve just got to be the man you wanna be, just because you think, like, how do you prove you’re enough? You do it. I’ve never thought I would ever win a fight.”

“We all kind of have this voice in our head like, you don’t think there’s a voice in my head that sees a big angry Chechen with a beard, you see him just run through everybody in the division. You don’t think I have a voice in my head saying, ‘oh sh*t, oh sh*t‘, we all have that voice. You just sack the f*ck up and be the man you want to be.” (Quotes via Bloody Elbow)

Strickland’s words show that even at the highest level there is no shortage of moments of doubt. In the end, however, it was his character and mental approach that allowed him to achieve one of the greatest successes of his career.