Is Ex-UFC Middleweight Champ Sean Strickland a BJJ Black Belt?

Sean Strickland grew up in a home with a violent and abusive father. His early life is the stuff of nightmares, with the 33-year-old admitting he used to stay awake all night, afraid his alcoholic father may kill his mother if he wasn’t up to protect her.

Predictably, Strickland was a troubled child and was kicked out of his school in the ninth grade. His mother, worried at the path ‘Tarzan’ was taking, took him to an MMA gym, where he started his martial arts journey at the age of 14. As he gears up to take on 7th-ranked Paulo Costa at UFC 302, let us take a look at ‘Tarzan’s martial arts background.

What Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu belt is the ex-UFC champ?

Sean Strickland is known for his unique and awkward style of fighting based upon the Philly Shell defense, combined with high-volume striking to pressure his opponents. His unconventional style is one of the main reasons he was able to utterly dominate Israel Adesanya, one of the greatest strikers and counter-punchers in MMA history, for five rounds.

Given that his fighting style is entirely based upon a boxing base, it thus comes as a huge surprise to most UFC fans that the California native has a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. While he does not use his grappling skills offensively, he has excellent takedown defense with a successful takedown defense rate of over eighty percent.

And despite working for ten years to earn his black belt, the American does not even think it’s effective. Ahead of his Adesanya fight, he swore off BJJ, claiming it was an ineffective martial art. “Yeah, I got [a black belt] a while ago, it’s bullsh*t, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work you guys, jiu-jitsu doesn’t work. It don’t work,” he told Nina Marie-Daniele in an interview before UFC 293.

Strickland has such disdain for BJJ that he even posted a video on Twitter of him chucking his black belt in the trash. “Over 10 years of my life wanting a piece of fabric,” a seemingly disgusted ‘Tarzan’ wrote in the captions. Along with a black belt in BJJ, the middleweight champion is an expert in another thing- acting, in many people’s opinion, unhinged, as he did in his recent interactions with his last opponent, Dricus Du Plessis.

Du Plessis respects Strickland more after assault

Middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis is who Sean Strickland took on in the main event for the UFC’s first PPV event of 2024 at UFC 297 in Toronto, Canada. After their contentious exchange at the UFC 2024 seasonal press conference and subsequent brawl, the fight became a bit personal. The former champion kicked off the proceedings by saying ‘DDP’ and his coach were involved in a romantic relationship, which provoked the South African to come back with a nuclear bomb. ‘Stillknocks’ promised to hurt Strickland so badly that he would forget the abuse he was subject to at the hands of his father.

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Strickland was really upset at these comments and felt Du Plessis crossed a line. At the event, the two were seated near each other, and it wasn’t long before the unexpected happened. Strickland attacked Du Plessis after the latter said something to the middleweight champion. Dana White and security intervened to break them up. Later, Du Plessis would say he did not want to press charges against Strickland and was even willing to take the blame to make sure he didn’t get in trouble.

But those incidents are in the past and now the focus is on the Brazilian ace, Paulo Costa. Will he overcome ‘Borrachinha’? Let us know what your predictions are in the comments.

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