NEWARK, New Jersey – Sean Strickland is the first to admit that his decision won Paulo Costa It wasn’t a very fun fight.
The former UFC middleweight champion criticized the way things went down in his co-main event fight in UFC 302 on Saturday. Strickland (29-6 MMA, 16-6 UFC) was happy to put his hand up and bounce back from his championship loss earlier this year, but he was disappointed he didn’t give the fans a war. He believes it was mainly Costa’s (14-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC) fault.
“It was weird, man. It was a weird fight,” Strickland told reporters at the UFC 302 post-fight press conference. “There was a moment where I stopped being in my fighting stance and started walking forward, like, ‘What the fuck are we doing here? ?’”
Strickland can’t pinpoint exactly what happened to Costa that caused the lackluster fight. His guess is that Costa, who has a history of Fight of the Night performances, simply wasn’t in the mood to fight that night.
“He landed calf kicks, but for every calf kick he landed, I landed like five hits,” Strickland said. “His stomach showed more damage than my calf. It was just a weird fight, man. I don’t know what was happening to Costa. I think Costa maybe just wanted to be friends. I don’t know.
“…You can never tell how good someone is until they fight someone good. I think there was that moment where every time Costa said, ‘I’m going to fight this man,’ he was stuck in that phase, like, ‘I don’t think I want to fight this man today.’ So I think a lot of it is you never know how good someone is until they fight someone good, and that’s what you saw there.”
For more information on the card, visit the MMA Junkie events hub to UFC 302.
