Sean Strickland is not worried about taking a fight against Nassourdine Imavov on short notice for UFC Vegas 67.
Strickland, a top-ranked UFC middleweight contender, is coming off a razor-thin loss to former title challenger Jared Cannonier at UFC Fight Night 216 last month. Cannonier managed to edge out Strickland on the judges’ scorecards by a split decision that some felt could have gone either way.
Before facing reigning 185-pound king Alex Pereira in July 2022, Strickland was on an impressive six-fight win streak. He will look to get back in the winning column when he takes on Nassourdine Imavov at 205 pounds this Saturday at UFC Fight Night 217.
Sean Strickland is ready to find out if French Imavov will give up in UFC Vegas 67 main event fight
During Wednesday’s pre-fight press conference, Sean Strickland shared his thoughts on preparing for a bout with Imavov and bashed his opponent for being French.
“If we have learned anything about the French, what are the French best at? Giving up. I haven’t really watched him fight. I know he likes to bang, he throws big punches, but he’s still f**king French, man. That’s a hard thing to move past. There’s a lot of history of cowardice to move on from when you’re f**king French. Maybe he’s going to prove a statement, maybe he’s going to say that his country’s f**king finally left the cowardice behind, but I don’t f**king know.
“The only thing the French are good at is having fairs and giving up and losing fights, but we’ll find out. Maybe he’s different.”
Strickland claims he got robbed in his last outing
The 31-year-old opened up about his most recent defeat to Cannonier. Strickland believes he did enough to get the nod and theorized why the judges saw it differently.
“Yeah, I thought I got robbed. I think a lot of people did. The scorecard got it robbed. It wasn’t close. Let me tell you why it was close. What you guys seen there was a technical, sharpshooter… a matrix-level solid boxing. Not one punch landed. I saw everything. I was living in the Matrix but you have judges that don’t know about fighting and they see a big scary black man throwing punches and they’re like, ‘oh man, that’s scary. He won the fight.’”
Sean Strickland will become the first fighter in modern UFC history to headline back-to-back fight cards, that too in two separate years.
