New UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland talks a lot of s—, to the point where you wonder how the people in his day to day life put up with his antics. It turns out some of them don’t. In a new interview with Joe Rogan, original champ champ Dan Henderson revealed that he had to push “Tarzan” out of Team Quest over interpersonal issues.
“He was at my gym for like three years, yeah,” Henderson said. “We kinda had to let him go. He just kind of gets too involved talking s— about people.”
“I liked him in the gym, I liked him there, he was a great training partner,” Hendo added. “You need at least one guy in your gym that does that and goes hard and makes everybody else go hard when they’re going against him. So I liked it, but he was just too disrespectful to teammates and stuff. This was a while ago, and I see that [he has grown up]. I always rooted for him when he left, it wasn’t like, ‘I hope that guy…,’ you know? No, I always rooted for him. I thought he had a ton of potential.”
“I was yelling at him to go up a weight class, cause he was always trying to make 170. I’m like, ‘Dude, you need to go 185, you’d feel a lot better. You’d be fine competing up there.’ But everybody’s always mentally afraid to be against the bigger guys.”
Strickland has found a new home at Xtreme Couture, and was mentally strong enough to capitalize when he faced a timid and tentative Israel Adesanya in September. Now he’s the champion.
“I saw parts of it, and he looked great,” Henderson said about the fight. “I thought he would do well against [Adesanya]. I didn’t think he’d do well just standing up with him there. I mean, I thought Adesanya would outpoint him a little bit. But, I thought Sean would take him down and beat the s— at him if he got on top … [Strickland] doesn’t have like huge power. He’s probably getting better at putting it in better places now, but he’s not a big knockout guy. He definitely adds them up, and he’s by far one of the biggest pressure fighters, he just moves forward all the time.”
Sean’s title win is even more surprising when you consider his fighting career should have ended in 2018 after a horrific motorcycle crash. Strickland was hit by a van and couldn’t fight for two years. Doctors suggested he never fight again. He ignored them and returned to win five UFC fights in a row.
“It’s even more impressive coming back from an accident like he had too,” Henderson said. “It just shows what the body can do if you just let it, if you’re just mentally tough enough to push through something.”
