Sean Strickland made light of Nassourdine Imavov’s intense staredown at the UFC Vegas 67 weigh-ins, but inside, he may have picked up some extra motivation to deliver a beatdown of his fellow UFC middleweight.
“I hate it when motherf****** do the staredown, and they look at me like that,” Strickland told reporters after his unanimous decision over Imavov in the main event of UFC Vegas 67. “I f****** hate it. It makes me so f****** angry, dude. You’re not my f****** dad. Don’t look at me like that.”
Perhaps Imavov wanted to get in Strickland’s head after the veteran middleweight stepped up on less than one week’s notice for the Saturday’s headliner, the result of Kelvin Gastelum’s last-minute scratch from the event. Imavov was a betting favorite and carried the benefit of a full training camp into the fight.
What Imavov didn’t bargain for was the relentless attack of Strickland, who walked him down over five rounds, winning striking exchanges and mixing in grappling and takedowns. Judges gave Strickland the fight 49-46, 49-46 and 48-47 to put him back in the win column after a decision loss to Jared Cannonier at UFC Vegas 66 just one month prior.
The unapologetically crass Strickland turned Imavov’s demeanor into another raunchy joke as he described the anger he felt.
“You see how that m*********** looked at me in the weigh-ins?” Strickland asked. “How hard was that? F****** Frenchie. Too bad your f****** country doesn’t look at everybody that conquered them like that. Man, that was so f****** hard, you guys. … Let me tell you guys something. If I was in the streets, and a motherf***** looked at me like that, I would probably f****** shoot them. This is what I don’t understand.
“When you look at a m*********** in the eyes like that, what are you trying to say? Like, I want to f*** you? If I look at someone like that, usually I want to f*** them. Are you trying to get into my head? M***********, I will f****** kill you, metaphorically speaking. But when you look at me like that, I would f****** cartel you and your family, you look at me like that, you m***********.”
Of course, during the fight is a different story for Strickland. In the heat of combat, he enjoys looking at his opponents, particularly when they’re suffering.
“Five-round fights are a little bit more fun,” he said. “It’s a bit more intimate. You get to know the guy better. You get to kind of see their soul. That’s nice. As the rounds progress, you could see what a m*********** is made of. As you start smelling the blood on your gloves, and you start feeling the f****** brain damage and the pain, you guys don’t know this, but when you hit a m*********** in the face, you can like see inside their f****** soul. You can see what the f*** they’re made of.
“And that s*** gets me off, you know? [Imavov] didn’t break. I thought in the end, he fought in the end. But one of the greatest feelings in the f****** world is when you take another f****** human being, and you break them. Like, you could f*** me if you want to. And the French man, he fought until the very end. But one of the greatest feelings in the world is to take another human being and break their f****** soul.”