When Sean Strickland agreed to appear at Adin Ross’s Brand Risk Promotions event, regret set in quickly. The UFC middleweight champion took to Instagram not long after, posting an account of why he wished he had turned down the invitation.
“I’ve never been a part of anything so shameful in my life, and I ha te myself. And I feel like less of a man after being here. Oh, God, why did I agree to this?” Strickland said.
Strickland’s friend Nina Drama had been part of his reason for attending, and he acknowledged in another video that connection while making clear it did little to soften what he witnessed.
“Like Nina’s my friend, you know, but I’m sick to my stomach. That is f**ked up. This is the most f**ked up thing I’ve never witnessed in my entire life,” he said. “I’ve got to go home and look myself in the mirror. I’ve never done anything so shameful in my life, being a part of this. Sorry, guys. Dignity is gone.”
His concern reached well beyond a single evening, pointing to the online personalities who attract enormous followings and the young Americans who absorb their content as a form of cultural guidance.
“I think what sucks is you take these, like, strea mers, and they have, like, this massive following. And you just know that, like, they’re the next generations of Americans,” he said. “And it’s so, so f**king sad to think that, like, the strea mer community is going to inherit America. It’s so bad. Like, I just wanted it all to stop. It’s so bad, you guys. It’s so bad.”
The outburst sits alongside other pointed opinions Strickland has voiced in public forums. Months earlier, when the question of UFC stars socializing at the White House arose amid renewed scrutiny of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Strickland said he wanted no part of it.
Speaking with Adin Ross and others, he made his position clear.
“I think I’d want to do the White House if there was some kind of inclusion for fans,” he said. “So, if there was some kind of inclusion for fans, it’d be more, but like, just to go hang out with the f**king Epstein list? I’m good, dude.”
That was before he reclaimed the title. Now, as champion, his position has shifted, and he makes no attempt to disguise the reversal.
“I want to go and do the White House card. Honestly, I’m a champion,” Strickland said. “I would like to go there and represent America.”
His logic is simple: the title earns access.
“I wouldn’t have gone if I lost because I would have been shamed,” he said. “Now I gotta go, now I gotta go.”
