Anthony Smith recently dared to spar with former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland, and he was taken by SURPRISE. Literally.
Strickland is notorious for taking sparring sessions very seriously and he’s often seen smashing people in training without mercy. Most recently, he bloodied up Twitch streamer Sneako during a sparring session, for which ‘Tarzan’ received a lot of flak. Among his loudest critics was Jake Paul, who slammed Sean for taking on guys with zero combat experience.
What about professional fighters, though?
UFC light heavyweight Anthony Smith recently had a sparring session with Strickland, and he found himself humbled by the experience.
“That dude’s good, he’s really good,” Smith said during a recent appearance on MMA Fighting. “I don’t want to pull the curtain too far back on training, but it- there was a part of me that was shocked at how good he was because he only shows a small part of his game when he fights. He has a much bigger, like, way more diverse technical game than he shows. The first thing I said to him after the round, like, ‘Why don’t you do this when you fight?’ He held me down for, like, three straight rounds. It was crazy.”
Strickland, who most recently lost his middleweight title to Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 297, is set to fight Paulo Costa at UFC 302. A win would put him in a strong position to fight for the belt, especially if Israel Adesanya manages to capture the title from Du Plessis when the two battle for glory in the coming months.
Will Sean Strickland return to winning ways against Paulo Costa?
