UFC star Sean Strickland has again drawn heat for admitting that he fantasizes about killing people, after admitting in a recent interview that he thinks ending a person's life would make him "feel good for a short time".
The controversial UFC middleweight contender raised more than a few eyebrows this past summer when he admitted that he would "love nothing more" than to kill one of his opponents in the cage should the opportunity arise.
Those comments drew scorn from the likes of Luke Rockhold, who was briefly booked to fight Strickland this year before pulling out due to injury, and no doubt led to a few difficult conversations in the UFC PR department – but if anyone was expecting the 30-year-old North Carolinian to walk back his statement, they can think again after he opened up on his homicidal thoughts and neo-Nazi background while speaking to MMA insider Ariel Helwani.
"I wanted to [kill someone] my entire life – that’s a big reason why I didn’t have a social life," Strickland said on The MMA Hour, via MMA Fighting.
"Like when I went out and got arrested, I just wanted to. There was just something in me that knew that if I could just kill a human being, it would make me feel good for a short time. It’s one of those things where, like, more people think like that and I’m just the one that says it."
Strickland continued, saying that at some point his homicidal ideations developed past mere daydreams to a point where he began to think that it was just a matter of time before he found himself in a position to act them out – and he credits his introduction to MMA training as the reason he isn't behind bars.
"I always say the difference between me and a lot of people, like you can watch 'Dexter', you can watch 'The Punisher', you can watch movies and you can think about killing, but I was on the path to where I was gonna act it out," he said.
"I was fantasizing, so I think that’s why my mom took me to train. Once you start fantasizing enough about it, you start putting yourself in situations to act out the fantasy. And training allowed the outlet for the fantasy to stop. I’d just go train, I’d fight, go train, I’d fight, go train, I’d fight. But if it wasn’t for that, I fantasize about it all the time."
Strickland is currently in the best form of his 27-fight MMA career, having won five straight fights to establish himself as a bona fide contender at 185-pounds. He first stated his desire to kill after his high-profile win against Uriah Hall this summer, and his status near the summit of the UFC rankings certainly hasn't compelled him to change his tune.
In fact, he says that much of his thinking is designed around attempting to manufacture scenarios in which he could legally end another person's life and detailed a situation in which he said he thought he was going to be attacked by three men – and said that he had already decided how exactly to kill one of them.
"I was running one night and I remember these guys on a loud speaker, they came down the road like, ‘We’re the cops, put your hands out,’” Strickland said.
"Obviously, I’ve been f*cking dealing with cops my entire life, I know he’s not a cop, he’s just an assh*le. I’m like, 'F*ck you man, you ain’t no f*cking cop.'
"And they start driving away and I’m like, ‘Yeah, you f*cking p*ssies,’ like now I’m antagonizing them. Three guys get out of the car and they start running towards me. So I kind of jog over to the side and I f*cking kick off like a PVC sprinkler pipe, so it’s kind of jagged.
"In my mind I was like, 'The first guy, I’m gonna run up, I’m gonna grab him, I’m gonna shove this f*cking thing right in his neck. I’m just gonna f*cking shove this into his neck. Then the second two, we’ll just see how that happens, how that plays out.'
"But that was like a moment in my life, if they would have – the moment I started running at them, they all took off. They took a full sprint back to the car and drove away, but that was like a moment in my life where I’m like, ‘I finally get to f*cking kill somebody and it’s gonna be justified.'
"'There are three guys who attacked me, I could kill this motherf*cker and get away with it.’ There are certain times in my life when I really tried to manipulate the situation to make it where I can kill somebody, but it just hasn’t f*cking panned out. I don’t go out much for that reason."
Strickland also admitted that he had been put on a path towards racism and neo-Nazism in his youth by a family member but says that he is now "ashamed" of that slice of his life.
He says, though, that he doesn't believe he will ever act on his impulses – and nor does he find them distasteful.
"I’m really nice when I meet people,” Strickland said. "If you’ve ever seen me meet somebody, I’m so nice, I’m polite.
"You don’t understand me; I like [the urges]," he said. "I like when I leave the house with the potential thought that maybe I could kill someone. I like it.
"After I’m done with MMA, I probably will work on rewiring my brain, maybe finding more value in human life. Maybe trying to connect more with people. But right now I f*cking like it, I f*cking enjoy it, you know? I f*cking like it."
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