Sean Strickland, Who Beat the Chimaev Who Beat the du Plessis Who Beat the Strickland Who Beat the Adesanya Who Beat the Pereira Who Beat Strickland

MMA Math,

At the UFC event on May 9, Sean Strickland defeated Khamzat Chimaev and became champion. Sean Strickland is a fighter with a pussy-like style who, whether three years ago or now, shows the same monotonous strategy and movements that generate absolutely no sense of anticipation, which is the exact opposite of his mic work. But if we give this fight a bit of context and a few points to watch, it might become fairly interesting.

The appeal of middleweight lies in the fact that it is not too massive, while still allowing us to watch monsters with perhaps the most masculine and ideal physiques a human being can have compete with the most evolved fighting techniques. After Anderson Silva’s seemingly eternal reign of nearly seven years came to an end, the division entered something like a Warring States period.

Then Israel Adesanya appeared, and with his refined kickboxing technique, he seemed to be building a long-term regime while raising fan interest again.

Long and sharp limbs, a unique sense of distance, and showmanship on top of that. He brought middleweight back into the global mainstream.

Pereira had already defeated this Adesanya twice in another kickboxing organization before entering the UFC, and that same Pereira put Sean Strickland to sleep in the first round with that “unreasonable left hand.”

After that,

Adesanya lost to Pereira.
That Adesanya lost to Sean Strickland.
That Sean Strickland lost to du Plessis.
That du Plessis lost to Chimaev.
That Chimaev lost to Strickland.

The expectation that “if A beats B and B beats C, then A must be stronger than C” does not seem to work very well in MMA.

---

What we commonly call mixed martial arts, or MMA, is usually understood on the surface as “a combination of boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, and other martial arts.” But this explanation seems only half correct. Strictly speaking, each of those individual martial arts is already another kind of “mixed martial art,” formed by bringing together similar branches and lineages. It might be fairer to say that what we generally call MMA is a competition rule set that permits almost all attacking methods from those mixed martial arts, as well as a system of adaptation, training, and fight strategy built in response to that rule set.

The usefulness of this integrated rule system is that it provides something like a standardized index, or rating. Just because A always beats B when they fight directly, that does not necessarily mean A is an absolutely superior being. If B can beat many other contenders whose styles are favorable matchups for his own system and maintain a higher global “rating,” then from the perspective of the system as a whole, B may be evaluated as the more valuable fighter. MMA plays the role of arranging ratings within a web of stylistic matchups.

Sean Strickland seems to enjoy displaying his masculinity with that distinctive phlegmy voice of his. But contrary to his rough and unfiltered speech, his actual appearance in the fight seems quite different. Strickland’s strategy is extremely simple and fixed. He stands upright, closes off his face with a Philly shell defense, and endlessly flicks out his lead-hand jab from range, wearing away at his opponent’s stamina and mentality.

As Tom Aspinall put it:

I’ve sparred Sean Strickland recently and I’ve got a little bit of a closer look on what he does well. He’s got a very very unorthodox style and he’s like quite a difficult style to work out. He will stand in this weird upright, it’s like a Philly shell, he using his shoulder there... yeah kind of thing. But his defense is unorthodox. When people are throwing punches at him, he’s twitching this way and he’s constantly on the move. He’ll stand straight up at you and he’ll just walk you down, he’ll just close that distance.

...

It would probably be better to give up the expectation that Sean will hit some new technical breakthrough and evolve meaningfully as a fighter. One might think, “Wouldn’t he become stronger if he added wrestling?”

In my view, that does not seem very plausible. It overlooks the physical law that human stamina is limited. Offensive wrestling consumes an enormous amount of energy, and that would mean destroying the very thing Strickland is best at and most confident in: the continuity of his long-range pussy jab. In other words, Sean seems to be a human being who has reached an “extreme,” a “local maximum,” within the ecosystem of his own body. If Sean learns wrestling, it would probably be sprawls learned in order to defend takedowns while continuing to use that “long-range pussy jab.” And it may be precisely because of that stubborn optimization that he was able to beat Chimaev.

Just as Sean has reached his own “extreme,” Chimaev is also another kind of “extreme,” refined through optimization after optimization. The same goes for other fighters. Sean has shown an inferiority complex toward Pereira in interviews several times, but to be fair, since Adesanya beat Pereira, and Sean beat that Adesanya, it might be reasonable to say that they are all within a similar spectrum in terms of ability.

Coldly speaking, Sean cannot overwhelmingly subdue all of these fighting machines. Instead, there is one thing Sean is good at: social media activity that does not seem to be constrained by “social desirability bias.”

Example:

I think fat shaming is always ok. there is nothing worse than being next to fat smelling mother fucker. and the most human thing you can do is telling a fat smelly motherfucker to put down the fork.

A good MMA fighter must be able to attempt a takedown when his punches are not working. Sean Strickland seems to be copying and applying that tactical principle from inside the Octagon to his entire life and career. If we think about his survival strategy, maybe even his “pussy jab” might start to look fairly interesting?