Joe Rogan: Sean Strickland is 'f*cking captain of the deep water'

Joe Rogan heaped praise on Sean Strickland's title-winning performance at UFC 328.

Strickland (31-7 MMA, 18-7 UFC) pulled off the big upset when he dethroned Khamzat Chimaev (15-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC) to claim the middleweight title this past Saturday at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

Strickland was able to survive Chimaev's early onslaught and turn things around in Round 2. Rogan was impressed with how Strickland managed to force Chimaev into a stand up battle and outstrike him for the win.

"I was nut-riding for Strickland the whole time," Rogan said in a recent episode of his "Joe Rogan Experience." "I was like, that guy is the f*cking captain of the deep water. He knows how to go into deep water, man. And he knows how to survive. He can survive.

"And the thing about Khamzat is if he takes you down, he wants to hold you down and just beat on you and not expend a lot of energy, like he did with Dricus (Du Plessis). You can't do that with Sean. Sean is not going to sit still. He's very hard to hold down. He's got super underrated grappling. Super underrated. When you saw he almost threw Khamzat later in the fight, and he did wind up on top multiple times."

Strickland revealed that he walked away from UFC 328 with a Type 2 AC separation, an extended Type 5 SLAP tear, and a partial rotator cuff tear/tendinosis.

"He ain't easy for anybody, and he had a blown-out shoulder," Rogan said. "Sean had one arm. I noticed he was doing this at the beginning of the fight. Before the fight started, he was doing this with his arm (lifts it up and down). So, he's warming up, he's doing this, but he kept doing this with his right arm. I’m like, 'Ooh, that's what I do if my shoulder's hurt, to see how hurt it is, how does it feel,' but deadpan-killer look on his face. Still won. Still fought, when a lot of guys would have pulled out.

"A lot of guys would have said, 'I can't use my arm, I'm pulling out.' ... Second fight with DDP, he f*cked his shoulder up, too, driving a dirt bike like a f*cking psychopath. Crashed his dirt bike, f*cked his shoulder up, and they told him he had to fight. So you had to take the fight. So you had to take the fight with a f*cked up shoulder. And one of the things you notice about when he's throwing right hands, in particular in this fight, I noticed they were awkward sometimes. Sometimes they just looked weird, like he was trying not to use his shoulder or something."

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Joe Rogan admits he was 'nut-riding' for Sean Strickland at UFC 328