Somebody finally put a price tag on Sean Strickland’s mouth. A prominent MMA coach told Sportskeeda that the former middleweight champ could make $15 million by leaving the UFC for boxing, and called the move “a no-brainer.” I love the number. I think it’s probably in the right zip code. The coach is still wrong, because there is nothing simple about walking away from a contract you signed a few weeks ago.
Start with what Strickland actually earns, since the internet spent a week getting that wrong. Mike Bohn reported, via Championship Rounds on X, that the rumored $400K/$400K deal was false and that Strickland made over $1 million for the Chimaev fight. A seven-figure night is real money. Half the guys on any given Fight Night card would sell their cornerman for that check. But stack it next to $15 million and you’re looking at roughly 15 Chimaev fights’ worth of cash for one night of wearing bigger gloves. That’s a big enough gap that I’d stop returning Dana’s calls, too.
The Menu Already Exists
If you want to know where that $15 million comes from, Jake Paul posted the menu himself. On X, Paul dropped a “before I rest” list of targets that reads like a pay-per-view fantasy draft: Canelo Alvarez, Francis Ngannou, Conor McGregor, Deontay Wilder, Ryan Garcia, KSI, Tom Aspinall for a boxing match, Nate Diaz under MMA rules. Sitting right there between McGregor and Darren Till is Sean Strickland. He tagged Nakisa Bidarian and told him to make it happen.
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That list is the whole argument. Being on it is the asset. The coach’s math only works because there’s a guy with a promotion and a platform who has publicly named Strickland as somebody he’d fight, and that’s the kind of fight where the money comes from the attention, not the belt.
Till, for the record, saw his name on the same list and replied to Paul, “Stop talking shite I would flat line you inside of 5.” Which is exactly the energy that makes these crossover fights print money. Strickland would bring that same chaos to a press conference times ten, and I would watch every second of it.
The Padlock
Here’s where the no-brainer pitch falls apart. Bohn’s reporting says Strickland signed a new six-fight UFC deal before facing Chimaev. Strickland then went public about how that happened, and Championship Rounds posted his explanation: the UFC made the deal a condition of getting the title fight.
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“Sign this or we don’t do this... They act like you have any power in this sport.”
That is a fighter telling you, in plain English, that he got squeezed at the exact moment he should have had the most leverage of his career. A title shot is the peak of a fighter’s bargaining power, and the UFC used that moment to lock in six more fights. Six fights is a long time. Even at a busy pace, you’re talking years before that contract runs out, and by then Paul’s list could look completely different.
So when a coach says the jump is a no-brainer, I want to know which part he thinks is easy. The money? Sure. The part where Strickland gets out of six fights he just signed for? Nobody has explained that one.
Everybody’s Watching the Wallet
The fight world clearly smells something. Paulo Costa quoted a post saying “Sean Strickland needs his money😭” and played dumb, asking “When exactly this happened? I’ve been at pi all the time and missed it.” Costa trolling Strickland is a holiday tradition at this point, but it tells you the money talk has gone fully mainstream. Fan accounts are openly asking whether Strickland fights in the UFC again at all, which is a wild question to be asking about a guy who just signed for six more.
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My take is that the UFC should be nervous. Strickland probably isn’t walking out the door anytime soon, but he’s saying the quiet part out loud, and fighters hear him. The next contender offered a title shot with a contract stapled to it is going to remember “sign this or we don’t do this,” and he’s going to remember that the guy who said it is sitting on a public callout from the biggest crossover promoter in combat sports.
Strickland in a boxing ring against Jake Paul is a fight I’d buy without thinking. The coach got the number right. He got the adjective wrong. Nothing about this is a no-brainer when the exit door has six fights’ worth of paperwork nailed across it.
