Sean Strickland has been open about his difficult childhood, which has included growing up with an abusive father and struggling with anger management issues. In an interview with Fox Sports ahead of his UFC debut in 2014, Strickland credited MMA for helping him become a better person. He shared, “My vice was anger. When I was younger, I had been kicked out of pretty much every high school I had ever been in. I went through life as a wrecking ball and then the older I got, I figured out what was more the cause of it, and I got past it, but I think if it wasn’t for fighting, I’d be dead or in prison right now.”
As a teenager, Strickland trained with former UFC fighter Paul Herrera and recounted an instance when he was made to fight a 24-year-old man at just 15 years of age. Strickland said, “Paul Herrera, he used to fight in the UFC way back in the day, that’s who I first started training with and he just kind of threw me in there. He was like ‘Do you want to fight?’ and when you ask a 14 or 15-year-old kid if they want to fight, of course they do. I mean I probably didn’t even want to fight, I was probably scared sh–less.”
Despite his reservations, Strickland prevailed in his first fight, knocking out his 24-year-old opponent. He went on to say, “He asked me and I was like ‘I’ll fight’. The first person I ever fought, I was like 15 and he was 24 and I knocked him out, and I had eight of those and it kind of sucked me into it.”
In a remarkable turn of events, Strickland became the UFC middleweight champion after defeating Israel Adesanya, a heavy favorite, at UFC 293 last year. This weekend, for his first title defense, Strickland will face Dricus du Plessis in a championship bout headlining UFC 297 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Canada.
