Sean Strickland has answered Joaquin Buckley’s boxing offer, though not in the way anyone requested. The UFC middleweight champion posted a sparring video Wednesday that shows him dropping Buckley, and Spinnin Backfist and Championship Rounds both picked up the clip within minutes of each other on X. According to Championship Rounds, the footage came with a short message from Strickland: “Sit down Buckley.”
The timing is the story. Before Strickland’s post, a separate clip had been making the rounds, shared by the account @Mmalord_p, showing Buckley confronting Strickland over Strickland saying the N-word. In that video, Buckley asks Strickland if he wants to box. Strickland tries to lower the temperature by offering to help Buckley with his wrestling. That was the public version of the exchange. Now Strickland has gone to his own archive and released a version where Buckley ends up on the mat.
The sources don’t say when or where the sparring session took place, or whether it happened before or after the confrontation. All we know is when the video was posted and who posted it. A knockdown in a gym with headgear and training partners around tells you something about one round on one day. It doesn’t tell you what a real fight between them would look like, and both men know that.
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Where Strickland stands
Strickland is the man at 185 right now. He took the title from Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 328 in May. Chimaev has spent the months since collecting grappling wins. He has beaten Robbie Lawler, Tyron Woodley, Gilbert Burns and Dillon Danis on the RAF mat, and he meets Colby Covington at RAF Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14 before a submission-only match with Jorge Masvidal for ALF League on Dec. 4 in Dubai.
Strickland’s name also keeps coming up in conversations about the biggest fight available. Michael Bisping said on his YouTube channel that Islam Makhachev, the welterweight champion riding a 17-fight win streak, should be allowed to chase a third belt at middleweight if he gets past the winner of Carlos Prates vs. Michael Morales, the interim title co-main event at UFC 337. Bisping was careful not to pick against the champ: “I’m not saying he beats Sean, Khamzat [Chimaev] couldn’t beat Sean, but Islam wouldn’t get tired at 185, because that’s what Khamzat did.”
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None of the sources list Strickland’s next opponent, and none say anything about a booked fight for Buckley. Strickland has been treating his social accounts like a reality show in the meantime. Days earlier he posted a video with Anthony Hernandez testing whether a man can draw a gun faster than another man can close the distance with his fists.
Quick take
Posting gym footage of a guy you’ve had a heated public argument with is about the oldest move in combat sports, and Strickland knows exactly how it plays. Buckley asked him to box, so Strickland sent back a clip of the one time it went his way and told him to sit down. That’s petty, and it’s effective, and it shifts attention away from what Buckley confronted him about in the first place. If Buckley wants to answer it, he has an easy way to do it: post his own sparring tape or get Strickland to agree to a date. Until one of them has a signed bout agreement, this is two men trading highlights from a gym nobody paid to watch.
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