IRVINE, Calif. – Ian Machado Garry won’t let Sean Strickland’s personal attacks go.
Strickland mocked Garry’s relationship with his wife, which Garry (13-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC) said has caused the former middleweight champion’s fans to come after him and his family on social media. Strickland (28-6 MMA, 15-6 UFC) is known to take shots at numerous fighters but has also emotionally opened up about his own childhood trauma. Garry plans on making Strickland pay for some of the things he’s said.
“Listen, we can shoot shots at each other all day long, me and another bloke, but here’s the two things that I’ll point out,” Garry said at Wednesday’s UFC 298 media day. “My wife was called a pedophile by Sean Strickland. No woman ever deserves to be called that. That’s the truth. My son, the people that follow Sean Strickland commented on a couple of my photos at the very start of all this hate saying, ‘Is the kid even his?’ I should never have to hear that. Those two things, they emotionally get me. I’ll get mine back. I’ll thump the f*cking mouth off Sean Strickland one day, and there will be nothing he can do about it.
“I’ll talk to him, I’ll dance in his face, I’ll do whatever I want, because the truth is, when we get locked into that cage one day, he’s never going to be able to deal with me. The truth is I have a target on my back. I have the ability to stand here and shoot shots at anyone I want, because this is my job, and they have the opportunity in return. So for me, when you attack people in my circle when they don’t deserve it, that’s out of line. Look, Sean Strickland is not the f*cking voice we should all be listening to. He’s deeply, deeply in debt with trauma, and he should just be silent and try to deal with his own personal issues himself, and that’s where it mainly came from.”
Garry meets Geoff Neal (15-5 MMA, 7-3 UFC) on Saturday’s UFC 298 (pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+) main card at Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.
Although Garry and Strickland are in different weight classes, the unbeaten welterweight still insists on fighting him.
“For sure, there’s no f*cking man on the planet that talks about my wife or my family like that and doesn’t get it eventually,” Garry said. “The truth is, he’s never going to be relevant again. He’s lost the belt. He’s lost the interest. There’s a point at which I’ll jump in on a short-notice fight, and I’ll dance all over him. I’m far too quick. I’m far too talented, and he’ll just be missing.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 298.
