Sean Strickland calls out MMA community for hypocrisy after posts mourn Stephan Bonnar

Sean Strickland gets himself into hot water weekly with his tendency to speak his mind on social media.

Strickland is unamused to see MMA community mourning TUF 1 alumni Stephan Bonnar all day yesterday.

Bonnar is credited with saving UFC at a critical time but had fallen on hard times in the last decade.

Strickland’s video outlines:

“So I’m gonna ramble on about something that just doesn’t sit right with me. It might not even be coherent. Stephan Bonnar just died and like my Instagram feed Google, it’s like flooded it with like pictures of, like, people like, hey, this is me and Stephan Bonnar trainin’, this is we’re buddies like we used to hang out back in the day.”

“Like I’m going to post a picture about him and get double tap likes. But like, man, the Stephan Bonnar I knew was f**king nuts. He was addicted to opioids. He got arrested, got kicked out of a hospital because they want to give him opioids. He his gym his gym went under during COVID. And you know me, I’m an asshole like I’m an a**hole.”

“I’m not going to post pictures with recipes. I’m an a**hole. But you f**king people that like after he died, you post pictures of him in support and all this, like, well, this man was losing his s*t. Where were you? And I’m not saying you had to be there for him, but you weren’t there for him. Then don’t be there for him now, because now he doesn’t need it.”

Strickland was rebuffed in the comment section with comments from Michael Chiesa, Chris Curtis and Roy Nelson. They respectively pointed out that if it weren’t for Bonnar, Strickland would be out of a job.

Nelson somewhat agreed:

“Not the most pc but people need to understand if you know someone hurting help them but only you know what you did or didn’t do and can look at yourself in the mirror. ”

Xtreme Couture Teammate Chris Curtis urged Strickland to have a filter:

“Remember that talk we had about keeping things inside? This was definitely one of those times… ”

Chiesa simply pointed out the facts:

“You wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for him.”

Strickland’s definitely crossing a boundary with his talk but he makes a valid point. Bonnar saved UFC but UFC abandoned him. Bonnar last competed in the UFC against Anderson Silva in 2012. Following that he was inducted in the hall of fame.

MMAFighting‘s obituary outlines that Bonnar was likely suffering from CTE:

“Bonnar was open about the damage caused from his career in MMA, saying his decision to hang up his gloves was influenced by the discovery of an enlarged cavum septi pellucidi, which has been linked to the potential future diagnosis of CTE.”

Stephan Bonnar saved UFC with his performance against Forrest Griffin in TUF1 finale. Forrest Griffin is still employed by UFC, while Bonnar was making his money on various sidegigs and prowrestling with a number of debilitating injuries culminating with a fractured vertebrae that ended up getting infected and ended up landing Bonnar in the hospital in 2021.

While UFC was the first to post an homage to Bonnar and confirm his unfortunate passing on the 22nd of December due to ‘presumed heart complications while at work’ they were nowhere to be found when Bonnar’s house burned down. Instead, Bonnar had relied on kindness of MMA aces retweeting his gofundme. It should be mentioned that Tyron Woodley and Brendan Schaub actually contributed to the gofundme.