Sean Strickland has somehow found himself in another nightmare on the road, and this one sounds absolutely brutal. The UFC middleweight champion just revealed he was in a vehicle that rolled six times at around 60 mph after he let a friend take the wheel. And well, the optics were anything but pretty.
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‘Tarzan’ took to Instagram to detail what happened, showing scratches across his head, shoulder, and back while looking understandably shaken up by the whole thing.
“You guys, I’m in a real bad place,” he said in the video. “Oh f—. I let my buddy drive. He rolled us going like 60. We rolled like 6 times.”
The 35-year-old then pointed to the injuries on his head, revealing just how badly things went sideways during the crash.
“Oh, that was from my head smacking the ground,” he said. “Going 60. Did not have a helmet on. I’m an idiot.”
Sean Strickland also showed the scratches covering his shoulder and back, explaining that they came from getting thrown around and repeatedly hitting the ground as the vehicle rolled.
“Oh f— dude. That was just from rolling and smacking the concrete or the dirt,” he continued. “F— dude, I’m in a real bad place right now.”
The middleweight champion then said he was going to lie down and sleep after the terrifying incident. In the caption alongside the video, however, he revealed that the other person involved in the crash was being taken to the hospital.
“I let him drive… F— lol,” he wrote. “I’m gonna take a little nap… The other guy is on his way to the hospital.”
In a more recent update he shared minutes ago, the 31-7 fighter explained that while the accident left him and his friend “unconscious for a little bit,” he was doing much better now. However, he also revealed his friend remains in the hospital, though he too is doing better.
For fight fans, the scary incident surely would’ve brought back memories of Sean Strickland’s 2018 motorcycle crash, a brutal accident that nearly forced him to walk away from MMA altogether.
In December 2018, on his way back from training, his bike collided with a van, leaving him unconscious for hours and suffering a brutal knee injury that saw his patella separate from the rest of his knee.
The accident required him to undergo emergency surgery the night of the crash. Strickland was then forced into a long rehabilitation process that kept him away from MMA for more than two years before he finally made his return to the Octagon in 2020.
And apparently, Sean Strickland’s luck with motorcycles still hasn’t improved much. Just before his fight against Dricus Du Plessis in Australia last year, he was involved in another bike accident while filming UFC Embedded.
Strickland reportedly fell off the motorcycle while showing off for the cameras. Now, another nasty accident has left the middleweight champion nursing visible injuries, and the timing couldn’t be more interesting.
That’s because ‘Tarzan’ could have a pretty big fight waiting for him next. Nassourdine Imavov has already hinted that he knows he’s next for the title shot, and he even knows the date of his next title fight.
“I know the date for my next fight, and it is for the title,” the Frenchman said during a fan Q&A ahead of UFC Paris.
Meanwhile, reports have pointed toward a potential showdown between ‘The Sniper’ and ‘Tarzan’ at UFC 335 in Las Vegas on December 12.
Sean Strickland regained the middleweight title at UFC 328 with a win over Khamzat Chimaev, and the former champion hasn’t exactly given up on getting another shot. ‘Borz’ has already pushed for a rematch, although Strickland shut down the idea of an immediate return fight and said Chimaev would need to pick up another win first.
Now, this latest accident could throw a wrench into his 2026 return plans. If it turns out that ‘Tarzan’ is dealing with anything more serious than the scratches shown in his video, his reported title defense against Imavov could suddenly have a pretty big question mark hanging over it.