Okay, so I saw this thing online about Sean Strickland and some neo-Nazi stuff. I gotta admit, I’m not into MMA or anything, but this caught my eye. It all started when I stumbled upon this show, “The MMA Hour,” with this guy Ariel Helwani. Never heard of him before, but he was talking about Sean Strickland. That’s when things got weird.
Someone dropped a bomb – “Did you know Sean was a former Neo Nazi?” I was like, what? Seriously? This Helwani guy seemed just as shocked as I was. He was like, “I had no idea,” all wide-eyed and everything. He even said he was gonna do some “deep diving” on Strickland. Made me curious, you know?
So I started poking around. I mean, it’s the internet, right? Information’s everywhere. I spent a good chunk of my evening just scrolling through forums, social media, and some news sites. It was kind of a rabbit hole. I was not really searching for anything in particular, just trying to verify the news.
Then, I found some stuff about this other fighter, Israel Adesanya. Turns out, he had been bullied because of his skin color. And guess what? While Adesanya was dealing with that crap, Strickland, in his own words, was involved in some pretty messed up stuff related to neo-Nazis. It’s like two sides of a messed up coin. I read through a bunch of articles and posts about Strickland’s past. It’s all pretty vague, but it seems like he’s admitted to having those beliefs at some point.
After a couple of hours, I felt like I was just going in circles. I watched a few more clips of Strickland talking, trying to see if he addressed it. I was trying to understand the whole story, from start to finish. Then I got some context from some of his fans and his interviews.
I spent the next day just kind of digesting it all. It’s a lot to take in. I kept thinking about how someone can change so much. It’s wild to think about how someone can go from having those kinds of beliefs to being a professional fighter. It’s a crazy world we live in.
I shared all of this with my wife at dinner, and my wife was shocked too. She suggested I share my discovery on my blog, so here I am. That is all the process.
