Sean Strickland has never met a filter he didn’t immediately throw out a car window, so it tracks that his latest target is the companies that sell the car windows. On Friday the UFC middleweight champion went on X and declared war on basically every logo you’ve ever seen on a fight week banner.
“I hate 99 percent of the UFC sponsors besides monster,” he wrote. “The only real ones in the game.”
Then he went brand by brand like a guy reading off a grudge list at Thanksgiving. Bud Light, according to Strickland, dropped a fighter he identified only as Dustin for using their product. He followed that with a crude line about the brand’s politics that I’m not reprinting, because you already know which way he went and nobody needs the word. Then Dodge got it, with Strickland claiming the company handed a car to somebody named Max and that it “breaks down a day after they gave it to him lmao.”
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He closed with the most honest sentence any fighter has posted all year: “And yes im just salty lol.”
My take is simple. Half of this rant is a genuinely funny bit about corporate sponsorship being goofy. The other half is a pretty clear explanation of why Monster is the only brand still answering Strickland’s calls.
The Dodge Joke Lands
Credit where it’s due. If a car company gives a fighter a free ride for promo purposes and the thing dies within 24 hours, that’s comedy. That’s a Fast & Furious sequel where Vin Diesel’s Charger won’t turn over and he has to call AAA. Strickland didn’t say which Max he meant, so I’m not going to pretend I know, and I can’t confirm the breakdown happened outside his post. But as a premise? Gold. Sponsors slapping their name on everything while fighters see crumbs is a fair target, and I’ll cheer anybody who pokes at promotions treating fans and athletes like ATMs.
The Bud Light swipe is where the bit gets complicated. Strickland didn’t give a last name for his Dustin either, but the only Dustin anybody in this sport is talking about this week is Dustin Poirier. MMA Fighting has recapped how the former interim lightweight champ was arrested for public drunkenness at Atlanta’s airport in June, with viral footage showing him challenging an officer to a fight and using a racial slur. He later apologized and thanked the responding officers. So the joke from Strickland’s side is obvious: the beer company bailed on a guy for drinking beer. Ha. Except Strickland is the only source here saying Bud Light dropped anyone, and if a brand did walk away from a fighter after a viral arrest with a slur on tape, the beer was never the issue.
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The Timing Is Brutal
Here’s what makes this rant land like a spinning back kick to his own face. Two days earlier, Joaquin Buckley spent his Tuesday and Wednesday calling out Poirier and Strickland over that exact word. When commenters asked Buckley why he wasn’t going after the middleweight champ, he posted video of himself and a friend confronting Strickland, with the friend calling him out for casually using a racial slur at a recent Brandrisk Promotions event, per MMA Fighting.
“We saw Strickland and I approached him and I let him know I know what he doing but these platforms you got to be careful what you say at all time,” Buckley wrote.
That’s about as gentle as a callout gets. The clips that surfaced on X showed things staying mostly civil, with Strickland trying to cool it down by offering to help Buckley with his wrestling. Then Strickland went home and posted old sparring footage of himself dropping Buckley with the caption “Sit down Buckley.” Poirier, for his part, answered Buckley with “Tryna get some views? Shut up or kill me!”
So picture yourself as a brand manager this week. You’ve got a champion who just got confronted on camera about slur use, who responded with a sparring clip, and who then fired off a sponsor rant containing another slur. Strickland frames the sponsors as fake. From the sponsors’ chair, he wrote their memo for them.
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I’ll defend Strickland on one front. I love a villain, and he’s a real one. He calls his shots, he doesn’t hide behind a PR team, and you never get a manufactured face-off from him that falls apart under the lights. That’s worth something in a sport full of champions who sound like they’re reading a terms of service agreement. But villains who get paid by beer companies usually understand the deal. You can be the bad guy. You can’t be surprised when the guy writing the checks reads your timeline.
The funny part is Strickland’s best idea this week had nothing to do with sponsors. On Thursday he complained that Boys & Girls Clubs offer volleyball and no boxing, then posted, “Fuck it I should just get a bunch of gloves and host boxing in the park in Las Vegas.” That’s a brand-safe pitch from the least brand-safe man in the UFC. If he actually pulls it off, Monster should pay for the gloves, and Dodge can send a van. Preferably one that starts.
