UFC fighter Sean Strickland weighs in on Jan. 19, ahead of his UFC Middleweight title bout in Toronto.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Sean Strickland, who will defend his UFC middleweight title in Toronto on Saturday night, is not nice.
That’s his whole brand, though he’s isn’t much good at it. Mostly, he screams and swears. He has no feel for the key to the call and response of top-drawer verbal jousting. For Strickland, neither calls nor responses can be borne. He must yell over them all.
So when he’s going deep on this villain routine, as he has in the prefight here, it doesn’t quite work.
For instance, a question from The Canadian Press. Scratch that. It wasn’t the question. The reporter, Neil Davidson, only had to name-check his affiliation.
“The Canadian Press, man. Were you a COVID bank account stealer, too? Were you on board with that?” Strickland said. “We got one of the Commies with the press. We gotta know where this man stands.”
‘Commies’? What is this – 1982? This guy sounds like a robo-read of a YouTube comment thread.
Let’s head over to one of the many videos dedicated to this encounter on that platform.
Top comment: “As a 59-year-old women [sic], I completely agree with Sean. Canada is a cesspool of woke tyranny.”
Which part bothers you – the bank accounts or the Commies? Because I’m sure Neil and I could soothe your concerns at next month’s Workers’ of the Press Darts Night.
In the run-up to this fight, Strickland has been randomly pressing every button on the culture-war control board. Incoherent shots at gays, Justin Trudeau and the rule of law, while sporting his signature ‘A Woman in Every Kitchen, A Gun in Every Hand’ T-shirt.
On a Venn diagram, that should mean he’s insulted 98 per cent of Canada one way or another. The 2 per cent he hasn’t have no access to WiFi.
Sadly, no one could be genuinely bothered by any of this. It’s too stupid to take seriously.
Even Strickland’s heart isn’t in it. You can tell by looking at him. There’s no curl of the lip. The pauses between insults are too long. You can feel his brain pan overheating. It’s all just noise.
The result isn’t outrage. It’s disappointment. Where have all the good bad guys gone?
Traditionally, fighters have had two personality choices – the jester (à la Muhammad Ali) or the brute (per Mike Tyson).
You don’t have to be either one, but you can’t be a star until you’ve chosen. People expect more than pistoning fists to lure them from online clips to pay-per-view.
They want to either be amused or scared. Great fighters (Ali and Tyson, again) can do both.
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UFC does violence well – better than boxing – but it has trouble with archetypes.
A few champions have made enough of an impression that non-obsessives have some idea what they’re about. But it’s not nuanced. Conor McGregor is a boor and Ronda Rousey had a great thousand-yard stare. That’s about it.
When I think of a proper villain, I think of Tyson coming out, totally serious, after a fight and announcing to Lennox Lewis, “I want your heart. I want to eat your children.”
They should pass a tape around in UFC locker rooms. That’s how you do ‘scary.’
This was back when fighting was still a whole world unto itself. It could afford to be self-referential. Someone like Ali could make rhyming couplets about Sonny Liston (‘What a beautiful swing/and the punch raises the Bear/clean out of the ring’) and assume that a critical mass of people knew what he was talking about.
Fighting doesn’t have that kind of reach any more. If you want to provoke a response, you have to go to where the people are already. Where are the people? Online, yelling at each other about something they saw on TikTok.
We tend to say that sports has become politicized, but that’s not right. Politics is arguing over policy and solutions. Nobody does that any more. What we do now is launch attacks on the other team designed to highlight allegiance to our own gang.
Sports hasn’t been politicized. Rather, politics has been sports’d.
Strickland is the ne plus ultra of this trend. Listening to him bang on mindlessly about Ottawa seizing bank accounts is no different than a random tennis star who notches 20,000 air miles a month lecturing fans about climate change.
Who is the target audience of either shtick? The rest of the people in the gang. They throw hands and hoot online and everyone understands that none of this is meant to result in real action or genuine change.
The modes of sports have infected politics, which gives people in sports something safe to talk about to their own constituency. The same guys delivering gotcha lines about the deep state think Bretton Woods is a theme park in Ohio, while the environmental evangelists think a Tesla offsets a Learjet. Athletes haven’t got smarter. They’ve just adopted a new script.
None of it is meant to be taken seriously because, c’mon, who reads books any more? We’re all just here to yell about how terrified we are about the future and then watch sports.
In his own way, Strickland is a perfect avatar for the new activist. Light on facts, but heavy on outrage. Committed to the cause, and you can buy the T-shirt for $24.95. Making a point, and that point is ‘watch my show.’
While Strickland was carrying on, it was nearly impossible to draw a mental picture of his opponent, Dricus Du Plessis. Du Plessis could have been a star 40 years ago – he’s got the look. But his delivery is atrocious and he can’t string together any canned lines, which eliminates him from consideration nowadays.
The crowd booed Du Plessis relentlessly. Strickland should have joined in, but he couldn’t prevent himself from an act of sportsmanship.
Shrieking the whole time, he reached across the dais to shake Du Plessis’s hand. Du Plessis warily returned the gesture. Strickland’s voice rose an octave – “TO THE DEATH. TO THE DEEEEEAAAATTTTTHHH.”
If anybody were directing this pantomime, they would’ve called cut and told the leads to try it again – ‘But this time, try to make us believe what you’re saying.’