Luke Rockhold thinks Sean Strickland played it safe against Jack Hermansson.
Strickland (25-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC) notched his sixth win in a row when he outpointed Hermansson in the UFC Fight Night 200 headliner earlier this month, emerging as a top middleweight contender.
But Rockhold (16-5 MMA, 6-4 UFC), who was booked to face Strickland at UFC 268 this past November before he withdrew due to injury, thought Strickland was reserved against Hermansson and could have shown more of a sense of urgency.
“I think he fought f*cking scared,” Rockhold told Submission Radio. “Honestly, I watched his last fight and I think he fought scared. He was like, you know, the pressure starts to get to you when you get to the top and you get to that potential, those title fights, and he didn’t let it go. He didn’t earn f*cking anybody’s respect.
“He didn’t put himself in that position where it’s like, f*ck, you know, it’s like, ‘That’s the guy.’ And he turns it on at the last second when he’s dominating a fight and he can’t f*cking – he doesn’t have that f*cking mentality, that f*cking killer instinct. F*cking killer instinct is what it is, and if you want to charge me in the parking lot, you better have the killer instinct, because I have it. And I’m not one to f*ck with.”
Rockhold is referring to a video Strickland posted in which he issued the former UFC middleweight champion a warning that it’ll be on sight if the pair runs into each other at RVCA’s parking lot – a gym both men have trained at before.
“Yeah, I don’t have a lot of respect for the man or what that man says,” Rockhold says. “I don’t think anybody does, and I don’t think he really knows what he’s talking about. When you’ve done that many drugs, I don’t know if things really come off clearly and if there’s much of a thought process to what he does. I think that’s why’s he so effective – it’s ’cause he doesn’t think. He doesn’t know, and he just fights with stupidity and it actually benefits him to a certain extent.”
