UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland Photo Credit: UFC on YouTube

UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland is set to defend his title for the first time at UFC 297 on Saturday night against surging middleweight contender Dricus Du Plessis. The co-main event for the card is a title fight for the vacant women’s bantamweight championship, which Strickland is seemingly not pleased about.

Women’s bantamweight contenders Raquel Pennington and Mayra Bueno Silva are set to fight in a five-round co-main event on Saturday night for the vacant championship.

Strickland, the headliner for the fight card, was asked on Wednesday what he thought about the co-main event being a women’s fight. The middleweight champion then went on to go on a rant about women’s MMA as a whole.

“Here is the thing guys. The WNBA and the NBA. Who watches what? Who makes more money? Sure, have women’s MMA a thing. I don’t like to watch it. I don’t think most people like to watch it. If female’s MMA were separate from male MMA, nobody would watch this ****. No one wants to watch this ****. It is what it is man, I don’t know what to tell you. Again, do you want to watch a sports car race a Honda Civic? No, you want to watch a sports car. There is a vast difference between men and women. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy it. I just don’t want to see two little cats fight. I want to see lions fight.”

As you would expect, there were a number of fans who disagreed with this take from Strickland on social media.

https://twitter.com/sosalip97/status/1747862924448682313

It’s a pretty wild take from Strickland here considering all you have to do is look back at the history of the UFC to see that women can certainly be a huge draw with a ton of fanfare around them.

Look no further than former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, who was one of the few UFC fighters to transcend the sport and become a true icon in not only MMA but mainstream sports as a whole.

Regardless, it sure seems like at least Sean Strickland would have preferred for another fight on the card to be the co-main event instead of Pennington versus Bueno Silva.

[MMA Junkie on Twitter/X]

About Reice Shipley

Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.