Sean Strickland
Sean Strickland woke up, opened X and decided Buckley needed an amateur therapy session nobody asked for. “I have a theory..... I think Buckley was hurt by a white woman and this is what caused his spiral”, @SStricklandMMA wrote, then followed it with a mercy ruling of his own: “Bro we’ve all been hurt by a white woman. I forgive you.”
The post doesn’t mention a fight, a date or a contract. It’s pure Strickland, a racially loaded jab dressed up as a breakup diagnosis, and it was the most-engaged fighter post of the day by a wide margin at roughly 4,900 engagements. Strickland has turned the unhinged-uncle-at-Thanksgiving act into a business model, and the internet keeps paying the cover charge. Buckley has a free shot at a reply here, and the bar for winning that exchange is lying on the floor.
Belal Muhammad
Belal Muhammad went the other direction and delivered a full sermon. Quoting a fan account that said a recent post left it disgusted, @bullyb170 wrote “Now the masks are off”, arguing that people used to hide behind fake accounts to say ugly things and now say them under their own names. He added that “Respect, decency, and basic humanity are being sacrificed for clicks and views.”
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Belal never names who or what set him off, and the account he quoted didn’t either, so don’t let anyone tell you this was a direct Strickland response. The timing is going to make people connect dots anyway. If you want the opposite of a Strickland tweet, it’s a Belal post about the decline of human decency, and today you got both before lunch.
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Makoto Shinryu Takahashi
Fight week energy from Japan. Makoto Shinryu Takahashi posted “チャンピオンの拳は特別なんです！” on X (@makoto0705mma), part of a short message tagged #rizin55 in which he called fighting his way of life, said he fights to protect the place where he lives, declared that a champion’s fist is special and asked fans for support tomorrow.
I love this kind of post. Short, sincere, zero sarcasm, and it doubles as a public promise he has to keep once the cage door shuts. When a guy tells you his fist is special the night before a fight, you either look like a prophet the next day or you hear about it forever.
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Gaston Reyno
Gaston Reyno spotted a bare knuckle knockout and immediately put it on the ballot. “Candidato a KO del año en Bareknuckle, lo dejó CONGELADO 🥶” @gastonreyno wrote, calling it a KO of the year candidate and saying the guy got left frozen.
He doesn’t name the fighters in the post itself, so click through to the clip if you want the who. The ice cube emoji is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and from the sound of it, so did whoever threw that punch.
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Koji Takeda
Koji Takeda had the funniest reaction of the day, and he did it in one short line. Quoting the RIZIN weigh-in results from @FightsMemory, which showed Meheura coming in 0.45 kg over while Muneteru Aimoto made weight, @koujitakeda0813 wrote “二連続も 笑ってしまった”, roughly saying it happened two in a row and he couldn’t help laughing.
The post doesn’t spell out what the first miss was, but Takeda clearly thinks this is a repeat. Missing by under half a kilo is the most painful way to miss, because it means one more sauna session or one fewer sip of water would’ve fixed it. Takeda laughing at it is basically the whole fan base’s reaction in a single shrug.
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Marvin Vettori
Marvin Vettori came in hot to defend someone in his corner. “Its crazy how fucking low these people are by all talking shit about my brother”, @MarvinVettori wrote, adding, “You guys never fail to represent yourself.”
He doesn’t say who the brother is or who the haters are, so I won’t guess. What I can say is Vettori has never once been accused of tweeting calmly, and the second line is a pretty clean burn. It drew only about 160 engagements, which means the people he was mad at probably never saw it.
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