Sean Strickland wants boxing money, and Dana White wants nothing to do with it. The UFC CEO came out swinging against Strickland’s interest in crossover boxing fights, shooting down the idea of the middleweight trading the Octagon for a lucrative run in the ring. Sports Illustrated’s headline on the story didn’t bother with subtlety: Strickland got torched. Zamin.uz also picked up White’s assessment of how Strickland would fare in boxing, and the verdict was clearly not a ringing endorsement.
The timing makes sense. Jake Paul just posted a wishlist on X titled “Before I rest…” that read like a fantasy draft board. Canelo Alvarez, Francis Ngannou, Conor McGregor, Deontay Wilder, Ryan Garcia, KSI and Tom Aspinall (for boxing) all made the cut. So did Strickland, and so did Darren Till, who answered Paul with a line that belongs on a T-shirt: “Stop talking shite I would flat line you inside of 5.” Paul tagged Nakisa Bidarian and asked him to make it happen. When the most famous crossover promoter alive names you, the boxing chatter writes itself.
There’s one big obstacle, and it’s on paper. Strickland signed a new six-fight UFC contract before his title fight against Khamzat Chimaev, according to Mike Bohn, as relayed by Championship Rounds. The rumors of a $400K/$400K deal were false, per that same report, and Strickland pulled in more than $1 million for the Chimaev fight. That’s real money. It’s also six fights of real commitment.
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Strickland doesn’t sound thrilled about how that deal came together. He claimed the UFC told him the Chimaev fight hinged on signing, saying, “Sign this or we don’t do this... They act like you have any power in this sport.”
Paulo Costa, never one to skip a chance at a needle, jumped on a clip of Strickland chasing a bag with mock confusion on X: “When exactly this happened? I’ve been at pi all the time and missed it.”
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Here’s the part that made me laugh. The same week White was cooling on Strickland’s boxing dreams, he was talking up boxing gates. White said the expected gate for Tyson Fury vs. Anthony Joshua sits around $34 million, per Sky Sports Boxing. That would rank fourth all time, behind Mayweather vs. Pacquiao ($72.2 million), Mayweather vs. McGregor ($55.4 million) and Canelo vs. Crawford ($47.2 million). White knows exactly how much money boxing can print.
My take: I love a guy who calls his shot, and Strickland calling out a payday is the most honest thing in this whole sport. But White holds the pen here, and he made Strickland sign before he’d give him Chimaev. That’s leverage, and the UFC doesn’t hand leverage back because a fighter got a shoutout from Jake Paul. Till can talk about flatlining people all he wants, but Strickland’s boxing debut is buried somewhere behind six UFC fights, and nobody at the UFC is in a hurry to dig it out.
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