
Hearts, Celtic & Rangers fans discuss title race and what winning league would mean
Hearts, Celtic & Rangers Fans Weigh In on Title Race Dynamics
Sean Strickland is not a threat to Khamzat Chimaev ahead of UFC 328, despite the usual trash talk. The buildup to the fight features typical banter rather than real animosity.

When it comes to trash talk, itās sometimes difficult to separate the line from the lions. I can remember sitting in the room when Tito Ortiz decided to tell a story when building up his fight with Chael Sonnen in 2017. It was like something from Masterpiece Theater. Had he been puffing a pipe and wearing his favorite slippers, I mightāve gathered around closer.
āItās kind of funny, I was listening to Christopher Walken, the little skit he did, and he talked about the lion, king of the jungle,ā Tito started out. āThis huge lion with a big giant mane. In this hot smothering weather in Africa. And the little, small lions come up to kind of poke at him. Bit on his ear. Bit on his neck. The lioness comes over and bugs him.ā
(I imagined Amanda Nunes bothering this lion and got chills).
āThen you got the jackals and the rest of the wilderness looking, and seeing that lion on that mountaintop,ā he continued. āAnd they come over and bother him, the jackals laugh at him. The hyenas laugh at him, nip at his toes. They eat all his food, and they sit back ā¦ā
(Here Sonnen began to snore, pretty loudly if weāre being completely honest, and Iāve come to believe he was faking sleep).
āā¦and you got jackals like this, and they think itās a comedy. Until one day he gets sick of it, and he attacks. And he shows people who the king of the jungle is.ā
(This wasnāt the payoff Iād hoped for, but by the end I understood that Tito saw himself as the lion).
āAnd this little hyena, Iām going to eat right through him. And weāll see on Saturday night.ā
(Eat right through him? Jesus.).
(I remember looking at promoter Scott Coker, who was in the middle of a text when Tito got to the end of the story)
The table was set for Sonnen-Ortiz.
Sean Strickland engaged in typical trash talk but clarified he poses no real threat to Khamzat Chimaev.
Trash talk is a common tactic in UFC promotions to build hype and interest in upcoming fights.
UFC 328 is significant as it features a high-profile matchup that could impact both fighters' rankings and careers.
UFC fight buildups often include trash talk, personal stories, and media appearances to generate excitement and viewership.

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Sean Strickland really will just say whatever.
(Jack Gorman via Getty Images)
The thing about Sean Strickland is that his humor is a little different. As in, thereās no real playfulness in what heās saying. No unintentional comedy, as with Tito. None of the comedic one-liners that Sonnen had, nor the self-owning parody of Colby Covington. And if thereās a line, he throws himself over it as far as he can.
I like to think that he is performing an experiment to see if the world is still genuinely capable of an emotional response, or ā short of anything quite so well-meaning ā that heās trying to prove to his buddies that he can get by with whatever the hell he wants.
You know, like he nudges his coach Eric Nicksick and says, āWatch this, Iām going to toss out some casual misogyny, xenophobia, gay bashing, racism and then sprinkle in some Islamophobia and ā just watch! ā there will be plenty of people who will defend me.ā
Whatever it is, there was real concern among UFC matchmakers early on that they might have trouble marketing a guy who told the world that heād been a neo-Nazi in his youth whoād idolized the movie āAmerican History X.ā Once Strickland forced his way into a title shot against Israel Adesanya and won the crowd over in Australia by taking his title, the fanbase itself reconsidered its labels. Maybe he wasnāt such a bad guy after all. Maybe we were reading too much into his curb-stomping fetishes.
Maybe the guy who said it would make him āsuper happyā to kill an opponent in the Octagonās biggest fault is simply that he overshares.
Whatās the big deal?
We have been in this Strickland whirlpool of slurs and violent soundbites for long enough to be immune to it by now, but we didnāt even make it to fight week before he turned his UFC 328 main event on May 9 against
into an indie snuff film. Or at least, until he introduced the idea of shooting Khamzat.
While hosting a little Q&A at the UFCās Performance Institute in Las Vegas, Strickland envisioned his first encounters with Khamzat next week in New Jersey, and letās just say he wasnāt anticipating a cordial handshake.
āAll Iām going to do, Iām going to pull my gun out and Iām going to shoot him,ā he said. āIf he were to come up to me like a man, say, āYou know what Sean, you said some things about my dad, Kadyrov,ā Iām like, āYou know what, dude? You whored yourself out, not me, I want to settle this.ā I would say letās settle this like a man.
āBut if you come up to me with three f***ing goatf***ers ā Chechnyans that donāt speak English ā Iām going to pull my gun and Iām going to shoot each and every one of you. Iāll be strapped in New Jersey, too, donāt even worry about that.ā
Khamzat Chimaev is a force of nature ā but he isn't bullet-proof.
(Geoff Stellfox via Getty Images)
As far as anyone knows, neither Khamzat, nor his traveling faction, has ever been involved in any romantic relationship with a goat. Itās doubtful that Strickland will roll up to the Garden State with a gun, either. Murder is as frowned upon on the East Coast as it is on the West. As with much of what Strickland says, his overboard sentiments feel more like nervous energy taking the form of wild talk, as the mics get hot.
Thereās no telling what heāll say next, but you can bet itāll make you feel some kind of way.
Perhaps it makes you feel like he canāt control his impulses, for one. What he has is a fight game version of Touretteās Syndrome, though I hate to involve the Touretteās community in what Strickland does. He can control himself; he just doesnāt care to. That can be seen as admirable to some, to be so uninhibited, but what makes him compelling to a voyeuristic public is that he doesnāt consider the consequences of what heās saying. In fact, he dares repercussions of any kind. When he talks about death, which is frequently enough, it doesnāt concern him.
Death to him is one of the things thatās such bulls*** about life.
Such an attitude, when it all leads to a fight, canāt help but play. But nobody is free from catching the strays of Stricklandās hypothetical gun that heās smuggling into Newark. Poor Alex Pereira, who has nothing to do with anything going on with Strickland right now, was used as Exhibit A of the kind of foreigner whom Americans will accept.
ā[The UFC finds] these sh***y people in Third World countries,ā Strickland said. āWe donāt accept you guys. We accepted Alexi Pereira because heās a f***ing American. Loves guns. Likes f***ing p***y, maybe a little too much.ā
Thatās another thing. When Strickland talks about sex, which is more often than he talks about death, it commonly involves animals, homosexual encounters or single-track minds, like āPoatanās.ā
The real drama is what happens before the fight. Khamzat, much like Khabib Nurmagomedov, isnāt one to mess around with. What happens when they come face-to-face for real? It took everything in Khabibās power to wait until after heād settled things with Conor McGregor at UFC 229 before he talon-swooped down on Dillon Danis to settle some emotional debts.
Khamzat might not wait until fight night, and then the UFC would be stuck with a bigger problem. Not that Strickland is overly concerned with leaving Dana White in the lurch if thereās any jazz before the rumble.
In fact, not even Dana was exempt from catching a Strickland stray.
āIām sure Dana White is a sociopath,ā he said, while standing right there in the UFC PI. āAt that level, letās be honest, at that level of what heās accomplished, the s*** he deals with, Iām sure heās a super-narcissistic sociopath. For him the lizard brain doesnāt compute, so heās like, f***ing bring it on dude, bring it on mother***er, which I respect. I respect that.ā
Then he said Dana himself would get off on watching Strickland kill Chimaev in a fight.
āI think Dana White would love to watch that mother****er get killed. Again, heās a sick f***, dude. I mean 100 percent; do we not think that about Dana White?ā
Here he flashed his dimples with a big smile. The one thing Strickland likes is approval, especially when heās trying to get to the bottom of how he knows what weāre really feeling.
āThe guyās probably a sociopath, or even, heās probably a psychopath.ā
If thereās a line, Strickland will cross it. If thereās a lion, well ⦠I like to think that in Tito Ortizās imaginary animal kingdom, Strickland is the hyena nipping at the lionās toes.