Sean Strickland has a lot of thoughts about Khamzat Chimaev.
Once upon a time, Strickland and Chimaev spent time training together on the mats of Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, but that’s long since past with both men taking shots at each other through the media in recent years. Well, add another one onto the pile because, at the UFC 312 media day on Wednesday, Strickland went on an unprovoked diatribe against Chimaev.
“We need to talk about Mr. Chimaev,” Strickland told reporters during his scrum. “Let’s talk about this f*cking guy. I keep hearing ‘Chimaev this, Chimaev that’ but what is the history and facts say about Chimaev? You guys are media, you should know this.
“Chimaev fled Chechnya with his family because of an oppressive, warlord dictator that killed people indiscriminately. No hate on him, it’s your country. He goes back to Chechnya and he goes back to Chechnya because somebody wants to buy him a G-Wagon and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah! I’ll be that whore. I’ll f*cking do it. I’ll bend the knee for you, man. I like f*cking G-Wagons!’ And then what happens? The leash gets way too tight. The leash gets way too tight, and you know what? I think the U.S. government looks at him like a terrorist now. Why? Because people get murdered all the time in Chechnya, and they completely violate human rights.
“So now Chimaev is scared as shit and like, ‘I wanted to be a whore but I didn’t want to go full tip.’ No, he f*cking flees to somewhere in [the Middle East].”
Chimaev has a long-standing relationship with the Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who critics lambast as an abusive dictator and who is currently under sanction by the United States for a myriad of human rights abuses. Chimaev reportedly relocated to Abu Dhabi in an effort to smooth his visa issues with the United States.
Strickland did not stop there though, also taking shots at Chimaev for his involvement with a recent memecoin.
“Now he’s hiding out … and now what does he do? He has a Bitcoin f*cking scam and he scams all of his fans,” Strickland said. “Let me tell you something, I had the same Bitcoin scam offer to me. It was like $100,000-$200,000. I was like, f*ck you, dude. I’m not going to scam my fans. I don’t need money that bad. But that’s what Chimaev did.
“So yeah, Chimaev, you can fight. You can fight. You’ve got a beard. But let history record it as you sir, are a whore. You fled a country, you went back, and you got buddy-buddy with a dictator and you fled again. It doesn’t matter how good of a fighter you are, you are and will always be a f*cking whore.”
If Chimaev has a problem with Strickland’s words, he may soon have a chance to settle things with “Tarzan.” Strickland challenges Dricus du Plessis for the middleweight title in the main event of UFC 312 this Saturday in Sydney, and the winner is expected to face Chimaev sometime later this year.
