Sean Strickland recalls asking his father to commit suicide: "Your wife left you, you're unemployed, you're a f***ing drug addict"
UFC middleweight Sean Strickland has shared a troubling story from his past, which involved him asking his drug-addicted father to leave him and his mother alone by committing suicide.
'Tarzan' is a polarizing figure in MMA and his recent appearance on Brendan Schaub's Food Truck Diaries certainly holds that up. The 31-year-old middleweight made headlines with outlandish remarks regarding Ronda Rousey, American MMA fighters, and the Ukraine-Russia conflict while appearing on the podcast's latest episode.
While discussing former women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey and her revealing that she had suicidal thoughts after her loss to Holly Holm, Strickland told Schaub that there was once a moment when he was 17 years old where he asked his father to commit suicide:
"I want to tell you about my dad. My dad was laying in bed one day with a .45. I f*****g walked up and he was talking about suicide. I said 'You should f***ing do it.' I was like 17 at the time. 'Your wife left you, you're unemployed, you're a f***ing drug addict. You should do it.' He didn't f***ing do it and died at 50 something of cancer, f***ing miserable."
Sean Strickland added:
"There's people like my dad, who you can give a million dollars, a billion dollars and they'll still wake up miserable, vindictive, shady. It doesn't matter what circumstance they're in, they're still miserable as f**k. That's why I gave my dad the gun and it was more like putting a dog down."
Catch Sean Strickland on Food Truck Diaries here:
Sean Strickland once hit his father with a guitar fearing that he was going to kill his mother
Sean Strickland always comes across as someone who does not care about his public image. His outlandish remarks have often polarized MMA fans. Strickland's brash personality was likely shaped by a traumatic childhood and abusive relationships within the family.
During a 2021 interview on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, Strickland narrated an incident where he hit his father in the head with a guitar:
“There was a story where I remember I used to sleep in my mom’s room a lot because I thought he’d kill my mom. I thought I’d wake up with my mom dead. One day, I f***ing crawled underneath their bed and he f*cking gets on top of my mom — maybe it was just rough sex, who f***ing knows? He gets on top of my mom and he’s strangling her saying, ‘Tonight’s the night you’re gonna f***ing die."
The protective instinct in Sean Strickland kicked off and he decided to take things into his own hands. He continued:
“I’m probably like in the third grade, I’m young. The only thing I see is a guitar, so I go and I grab the guitar and I f***ing just smack him in the head as hard as I can. I grab the phone, I run out, I call the cops and my mom — her dumb a**, she f*cking bailed him out of jail the next day.”
Watch Sean Strickland narrate the incident from the 7:20 mark of the video below: