Ian Machado Garry addresses Sean Strickland

A bout of pneumonia forced rising welterweight star Ian Machado Garry out of his UFC 296 fight with Vicente Luque.  He’ll now face Geoff Neal at UFC 298 in February.

“The truth is I was offered a name.  I accepted that name.  I got sick.  They offered me another name.  I accepted that name and now I’m focused on that,” Garry told The MMA Hour.  “At the end of the day, the truth is, when I show up Ian Machado Garry is trying to put on a show and that’s what everyone is looking out for and what everyone’s excited for, and the names I’m doing it against are only relevant to showcase my talent.”  

The end of 2023 was a tumultuous time for Garry.  He was forced out of UFC 296 and found himself and his wife, Layla, under attack by middleweight champion Sean Strickland, and others.  Strickland posted videos degrading Garry’s wife.  While Garry responded via social media, he spoke about the incident at length with host Ariel Helwani.  

“The truth is people love to hate.  The internet, Instagram, Twitter, all of it is a very toxic place and especially the MMA media.  99 percent of it is very toxic.  One minute they love you the next they hate you.  The hate is ridiculous.  The love is amazing, so I think it might of all come my way because of my success and my rise and everything I’m doing.  People either love it, or they hate it.  Either way they’re giving me content and tuning into my fights,” Garry said.  

Garry dealt with it by responding.  Behind the scenes, he was hurt by all the negativity.  

“It f**king stung,” he said.  “When people start attacking my loved ones with viscous, vile, untrue hurtful words to an obsessive level it boils my blood and it boiled my blood to an extent that I have to be the bigger man and not respond until I have the opportunity to respond.

“I was pissed.  I still am pissed, and there’s a lot of people that I’m pissed at but I’ll get on my back eventually.  It’ll all come back.  I will get it.”

Garry addressed Strickland directly and believes the middleweight champion needs to get help.  

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“You’ve got people like Sean Strickland who was talking all that mad stuff online and attacking people’s families and people’s wives.  The truth is he is just someone who is dealing with his childhood trauma, the hurt and pain from his past and projecting it to the world.  I am not that,” Garry said.  

“This is my point that I’d like to kind of get across.  I don’t personally care what happened in his childhood.  What happened in his past that has him the way he is now; I don’t care what happened in your past.  Don’t attack and project your pain on to other people, or to other people’s families because you can’t deal with it correctly.  The UFC PI has mental health and has ways to deal with athletes’ mental health.  Go talk to them and deal with it the way it should be dealt with.  Talk about it.  Get rid of it.  Release it, accept it because to attack other people’s families and other people’s loved ones because you have trauma, childhood trauma, it’s completely unfair.  It’s inexcusable.  You don’t have a reason to attack other people because you are in pain.  That’s kind of my outlook on it,” said Garry.