This past weekend, Sean Strickland returned to winning ways at UFC Houston by dismantling Anthony Hernandez in Round 3 of the main event and securing a TKO win.
At the post-fight presser, “Tarzan,” who loves to play the heel, accused Hernandez’s head coach, Jim West, of grooming former UFC fighter Aspen Ladd. Strickland said:
Can you picture being 35 years old and meeting a sweet little 14-year-old Aspen Ladd and saying, ‘I’m gonna marry her when she turns 18. That’s what f**king Jim West did. So whenever I was in that cage, and me and “Fluffy” are locked in, and I’m looking over at Jim West, and I was like, f**k this guy. I wasn’t fighting “Fluffy.” I was fighting Jim West. Swear to god.”
Check out Sean Strickland’s comments below:
Moments later, the UFC PR team, panicking about what was being said, cut off the polarizing American fighter’s microphone and muted the audio before he could add on more offensive comments, which would be livestreamed and create additional problems for the UFC’s PR team.
Oscar Willis breaks down what really happened with Sean Strickland at the UFC Houston post-fight presser
Content manager at Conor McGregor’s The Mac Life, Oscar Willis, recently appeared on Submission Radio, where he broke down what happened at the UFC Houston post-fight presser and why Sean Strickland’s mic was muted in the middle of the presser. He said:
I do think that he was just accusing a former fighter of being a pedophile. There’s probably some sticky legal ground there that you want to avoid. Do you know what I mean? Like, if you’re the one who’s meant to be controlling the room and controlling the athlete and controlling the media and sort of keeping it going, what the f**k are you meant to do?”
Willis added that the decision to mute Strickland was made on the spot:
It was not a decision that was unilaterally passed down. It was a decision made on the spot because he was going crazy, and it’s like, fu*k, where are we going to go with this?’ So it’s not like the company silenced him. It’s what it is. But I get it. I get why they did. It’s again, like I said, this isn’t easy for anyone when you’re dealing with Sean.”
Willis opined that instead of cutting the microphone, the UFC should stop Sean Strickland from showing up at media days if his remarks continue to escalate and risk violating Paramount broadcast guidelines.
Strickland didn’t appear to care that his microphone was muted during the press conference. When asked about the situation, Oscar Willis said that muting Strickland actually made him look like a sympathetic figure and turned the moment into a bigger story than whatever extra offensive and controversial remarks the former UFC champ might have made:
He was not upset. He didn’t give a f**k to be clear. He was just like, ‘Oh, is that it?’ Like he didn’t get it. He was answering Schmo’s question. He was trying to be like, ‘And that’s the end of that.’ He didn’t care. I actually don’t even think he realized. He was like, ‘Oh, the mic’s not working.’ But he didn’t care. I think everyone’s going to blow this up to be like, ‘Oh my god, it’s crazy.’ It was a decision made. That’s what it is.”
Willis emphasized that he personally would not have cut Sean Strickland’s microphone:
I sympathize with the person who made the decision. It’s I wouldn’t have made the same decision because this is what reaction I would have expected: you kind of make him a sympathetic figure. This becomes a bigger story than whatever dumb sh*t he would have said. So it’s definitely not something I would have done, even setting aside free‑speech stuff. I just wouldn’t have done it on a f****ng business level. But I sympathize with the person who made the decision because he’s calling people pedophiles, and you just don’t know.”
Meanwhile, host Denis Shkuratov added that Sean Strickland is like a “powerful comedian” who often turns the spotlight back on the media and makes them uncomfortable. Shkuratov said:
When you go to a press conference with Sean Strickland, it’s literally like being at a comedy roast, and Sean is out there, and he’s turning the mic back onto the media because he knows it makes people uncomfortable. He’ll bring up something crazy, like you asked him about the Khamzat fight and he’s talking about Epstein’s Island, goat fu**ing, all sorts of crazy shi*t. He was talking about making eye contact with one of the coaches and… So people need to understand it’s not easy. Being in a room with Sean Strickland, he’s a polarizing guy, but he’s very, very powerful. He’s like a comedian, a powerful comedian that can just switch things around.”
Willis opined that press conferences with “Tarzan” feel like an open-mic session:
It’s an open mic. It’s an open mic that you’re going to, and then to be like, ‘Oh, I can see the feedback on the mic, the cutting of the mic,’ like I know I can see people are very upset about that, which in turn is why I probably wouldn’t have done it. You’ve just made him a martyr.”
Check out the full interview and Oscar Willis’s comments about Sean Strickland below:
