UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira has teamed up with former foe, Sean Strickland for his title defense at UFC 307 on October 5. In light of this, popular MMA influencer, Nina Marie Daniele decided to visit the champ and take a few lessons and that’s when she got all defensive after Pereira’s coach deemed her friend, Sean ‘evil’.
Nina was all chirpy and lively, doing what she does best, creating a jovial conversation with Pereira and his coach, Plinio Cruz at the gym.
Credits: USA TODAY Sports
The influencer mentioned how ‘Tarzan’ gave her a contusion on her leg with an apparent leg kick, prompting the coach to say the obvious and call Sean a ‘bad guy’.
Nina immediately got defensive and said that he had a good heart.
“He’s got a heart. He’s just a dog, you got to learn how to rub him the right way.”
Now, Nina and Strickland are good friends and are often quite defensive of each other. As a matter of fact, it was her ridiculous interviews with Strickland that put her on the UFC map and gave her a new career.
That said, Strickland has a habit of going unnecessarily hard during sparring and training sessions against people that aren’t professional fighters.
Strickland badly hurts ex-Navy Seal during training
In a video that went viral some time ago, Strickland was seen sparring with a former Navy Seal and going too hard at it. Even as the poor man, looks defenseless, Strickland continues to batter him for fun.
Funnily enough, this kind of aggression has rarely been seen from him in actual fights. Before this incident, he had absolutely beaten the crap out of the streamer Sneako, despite the latter having no combat sports experience at all.
This can, of course be considered bullying, something former middleweight champion Israel Adesanya had addressed before his fight with middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis.
Speaking about Strickland roughhousing amateurs, Izzy had asserted that he only does that when the other person can’t hit back. Adesanya had further stated that if Strickland was sparring someone like the UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira, he wouldn’t dare to go that hard.
And Strickland isn’t the only one who does this. Some time ago, a video of Chechen fighter Khamzat Chimaev had gone viral for sparring way too hard with amateurs.
Needless to say, nobody was happy with this. Fans online bashed the Chehchen for trying to show how tough he is against influencers when he constantly pulls out of fights due to illness.