Mailbag: Does Sean Strickland have the right style to shock Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 328?

In Khamzat Chimaev really as unbeatable as he seems, or will the UFC 328 main event see him get exposed by permanent underdog Sean Strickland? Plus, what’s the craziest thing this writer ever did to get a story?

All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @Ben_Fowlkes on Threads.

@Mike_Fierce_: Is Chimaev just GSP 2.0?!? Undefeated guy with an invincible aura whom everyone thinks CANNOT be beaten?!? Brother we’ve seen this movie before. Chuck, Anderson, GSP, Aldo, Conor, Ronda. When Borz finally loses & it’s Sean that does it, everyone will say I SAW THAT COMING 

Would it really be so bad to be “GSP 2.0” though? That’s my first question here. Georges St-Pierre did dominate his division for like seven years. He lost two fights in his entire career, and he avenged both of those defeats (first Matt Hughes, then Matt Serra) via total destruction. If Khamzat Chimaev could have that kind of career, my guess is he’d be pretty pleased with it.

But if MMA has taught us anything, it’s that nobody is unbeatable. Sometimes it’s the ravages of age or injury or lifestyle that finally catches up to a fighter. Other times it just takes the right style at the right time. 

Does Sean Strickland have the right style for Chimaev? I tend to think no, he does not. He has decent defensive wrestling, but we’ve never seen him beat a truly elite grappler. And while he has a very effective striking game, he doesn’t really have that one-shot power. He’s at his best when opponents consent to fight his kind of fight. But Chimaev’s whole thing is dragging people kicking and screaming into his world. 

If the champ is in shape and uninjured and doesn’t fight dumb — which is to say, he doesn’t let anger at Strickland’s pre-fight comments turn him into a mindless brawler — I think he gets it done here.

@justlikelasagna: Sure, go ahead and talk about the trash talk and the bad blood and all that but please also talk about this freakin fight in the cage! Chimaev is #1 on the must watch list. Sean Strickland could defy the odds again. I can’t believe this fight is happening!!!!

In a weird way I think being the big underdog is one of the best things Strickland has going for him. He performs well in that role. He seems to feel comfortable there. The fights where he’s been most dangerous are the ones that, on paper, he doesn’t seem to have any business winning. It’s against people like Dricus du Plessis, who Strickland’s style should match up pretty well against, that he underperforms.

But when I think of all the people we’ve seen Chimaev ragdoll with ease, it’s hard for me to see how Strickland is the guy who shuts all that down. He either needs to either secretly be a wrestling savant, or he needs Chimaev to throw the game plan out the window in search of a knockout, or he needs to catch Chimaev on the way in with something that at least hurts him enough to change the fight. In fairness, he’s done it before. Just not to Chimaev.

@ProFightsInfo: Ben, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done for one of your pieces? As an example, Ariel waiting hours at a strip club to get a few minutes to do an interview w/ Floyd Mayweather.

I’m not sure it was all that crazy, but it was memorable. Back when Jon Jones was the hot new kid in the UFC, I got sent to Montreal to meet him at Tristar Gym for a Fight Magazine cover story. (That’s how long ago this was; there were still magazines then.) 

But when I got to Montreal, that’s when Jones told me he’d just remembered that his license was suspended for too many speeding tickets so he couldn’t drive across the border. (He was living in Ithaca, New York, at the time, and he was also definitely still driving, so the vehicular stuff was what you might call foreshadowing.)

After some consultation with my editor, Matt Brown (not the fighter, but a rad dude nonetheless), I decided to rent a car in Montreal and drive it to meet Jones in Ithaca. That’s about a five-hour drive, if you’re wondering. And let me tell you, when you come from one border state (Montana) and fly to Canada, only to then drive back into a different border state, well, the border control officers don’t even bother with too many questions before getting down to the business of searching your car.

The story came out well. My time with Jones was memorable. There was a joke going around the Fight Magazine offices that I was a jinx and whoever I wrote a profile on ended up losing the next fight. Will it surprise you then to learn that all this happened about a month before Jones fought Matt Hamill and got disqualified for illegal elbows? I tell you, life is funny sometimes. But at least the early morning drive from Ithaca back to the airport in Montreal is a beautiful one in the fall, with all the trees exploding in yellow and red.

@pmsdeadandalive: how many companies could sean strickland work for, say the things he says and not be immediately fired? 

at this point it’s beyond uncomfortable and frankly, disgusting, to watch a clearly mentally ill man spew hate and be celebrated/well compensated for it. enough is enough.

Not that I don’t see where you’re coming from — I think many, many people do — but I stopped asking questions about what other work place would tolerate any of this a long time ago. The fact is, this is not like any other job on the planet. We set ourselves up for bad comparisons when we pretend that it is. 

These are people who are paid to get into a cage, stripped to the waist, and fight other human beings in front of a live audience. That’s not an excuse for any and all terrible behavior, but it is worth remembering that this line of work has about as much in common with working an office job as it does working on a 19th-century whaling ship.

The more I’ve seen of Strickland’s whole schtick, the more I’ve come to think of him as a wounded child in a man’s body. Remember those kids in school who acted out, totally unable to regulate their own emotions, only to eventually find that there was at least some weird brand of validation that came from the attention? He’s basically an adult version of that. Seems like what he fears most now is losing that attention — and the rewards that come with it.

@AzzaHausen: During the main event. Should the camera pan to Imanov in the rafters with his Raven watching over or would it be more mysterious if he was just in the audience with the rest of the fighters with the raven?.

In my ideal world, Bruce Buffer would be launching into his main event intros when that raven comes swooping down out of the dark and lands on the shoulder of his Jackson Pollock-esque sport coat. Buffer stops cold, eyes darting sideways like, uhhhh is anyone going to do something about this? When Herb Dean or whoever steps up to shoo it away, the raven lets out a mighty caw and then takes flight, spiraling upward while clearly keeping a close eye on the mystified fighters below. 

The camera people can’t help it. They all train their lenses on the raven, following its circuitous path into the upper reaches of the arena, where it comes to rest on the outstretched hand of a man hidden inside a dark cloak. Slowly, he reaches up to push back the hood concealing his face. Why, it’s … it’s Nassourdine Imavov! He’s here, up there, with the raven. Watching. And waiting.

@ewillcock: Many of us were surprised at the young hotness over the weekend.  He beat up flat nose Jackie more than Islam did, and looked great doing it, even getting the finish.  What’s his ceiling? Hard to believe that style would give Islam problems, eh?

I was very impressed with Carlos Prates, but I still wouldn’t pick him against Islam Makhachev right now. That said, at a certain point it doesn’t matter whether or not we think he’d win. You beat up enough top welterweights, sooner or later they have to give you a crack at the welterweight title.

@jmprobus: Will we ever see Shavkat again? My guy was destined for glory until life came out of left field and hit him with a sneak Imanari Roll. Not cool

The recent updates I’ve seen were not super cheerful. We’ve seen people go through some tough stuff and some long roads back to the top. We’ve also seen people who have all the promise in the world but then one terrible break changes their trajectory forever. I really hope Shavkat Rakhmonov is the former and not the latter. I’d hate for this to be another T.J. Grant situation, where we lose a top contender at his peak before he has a chance to really test himself.

@armwrestlingcea: Chael vs Jorge, do you want to see it? Who wins?

There’s enough other fighting going on in MMA. I feel absolutely no need to see this one. Both Chael Sonnen and Jorge Masvidal are gentlemen of a certain age who have found solid niches in worlds that no longer require them to take their shirts off and bleed on TV. That’s as it should be. Some things are just better left to younger men who can still get out of a chair without groaning like an old ship being crushed by polar ice. 

Whatever beef there is between them should probably stay where it is, which is to say in a series of rants directed at a laptop camera with a ring light behind it while the other guy is not in the same room.