In the combat world, there are fight stories, and then there are survival stories. Sean Strickland‘s latest confession clearly fits into the latter.

The outspoken UFC middleweight champion just revealed how close he really came to shooting himself while playing Russian roulette with a loaded revolver. On The Sean Ryan Show, ‘Tarzan’ recalled the deeply personal incident, praising a woman named Jackie, who he was dating at the time, for stepping in just before he pulled the trigger.

“I’m just f—— spinning it. And in my brain I’m just talking to her, you know. F——, a girl named Jackie. You saved my life, Jackie. Thank you. I am spinning it, I put a round in it,” Strickland told Ryan. “I’m just like talking to her, and I’m just like hyper-fixating on playing Russian roulette, like spinning it. And I put it in, and still to this day, dude, it gives me f—— chills.

“So I like, I put the round in, I spin it, and I’m just like, talking to her. I was like, ‘Dude, I should do it.’ And she’s like, ‘Sean, no, don’t do it, don’t do it. I was like, ‘No, I mean, like, what are the odds? Like one in six. Like, that’s good odds.’ I’d take those odds, right?”

‘Tarzan’ said he eventually put the gun to his head and began mentally preparing himself to pull the trigger.

“I put the gun to my head, and I’m like sitting there,” he continued. “I haven’t cocked it yet. It was a double-action. And then like, I’m like, I’m working myself up to it. I’m working myself up to it. Like, ‘You f—– p—-.’

“Even though I’m having a conversation with her, like, in my heart, like, I have, like, I have every bit of like adrenaline and dopamine just being f—— saturated in my brain right now, and I f—— love it.”

Luckily enough, his girlfriend back then finally stepped in at the very last minute just as he was about to pull the trigger.

“I cock it back, dude, and she starts f—— crying and grabs the gun out of my hand,” he added. “She’s like, so, f——, ‘If you do, I’ll leave you.’ And I’m like, let me just see what would have happened. Opened it up, I was about to shoot myself in the f—— head. She literally saved my life. Saved my f—— life.”

Thankfully, though, the UFC middleweight champion is in a much better headspace today. However, despite the incident, he still has the same affinity for guns today. Given Strickland’s well-known views on firearms, this confession is hardly surprising. ‘Tarzan’ has been a very vocal supporter of gun ownership and has a sizable firearm collection. He once joked that he carried a gun because even former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou looked intimidating to him during training.

“So Francis asked me once why I carry a gun,” Strickland said on MVP Uncut a few months ago. “I told him, ‘Look in the mirror.'”

Firearms have also played a role in several other moments of Sean Strickland’s life. He once held a domestic abuse suspect at gunpoint outside his Las Vegas home until police arrived, and was even held at gunpoint during a road-rage incident.

Ahead of his fight with Khamzat Chimaev, ‘Tarzan’ even made headlines by claiming he would bring a gun if confronted by the then-middleweight champion and his team outside the cage.

Luckily for everyone involved, nothing untoward ended up happening ahead of the fight, and Sean Strickland went on to win the middleweight title fair and square. In fact, he even apologized to Khamzat, his team, and the fans for his statements after the fight.

It is worth noting that while firearms have played a key role in many of Sean Strickland’s most controversial moments, they are not the only reason he’s come close to losing his life and his livelihood.

Sean Strickland’s career was nearly ended as a result of a motorcycle accident

Long before capturing UFC gold, Sean Strickland faced the possibility that his fighting career may reach an abrupt end. Back in 2018, ‘Tarzan’ was returning from training when his motorcycle collided with a van. The incident knocked him out for several hours and caused devastating damage to his left knee.

“I left some of my kneecap on the road,” Strickland told MMA Fighting. “I had a doctor coming up to me saying, ‘You’re going to surgery,’ and at that moment I started crying a little bit. I don’t know if it’s just the lifelong battle with depression that fighters have, but I just remember waking up like, ‘F—, I hope I can fight again.’

“Let me just tell you this—every doctor I talked to said I shouldn’t fight again. The only ones that were really supportive of me coming back to the gym and coming back to fight were all the people at the UFC Performance Institute. They were like a bright light to me. I’d go there, and I couldn’t even walk up the stairs, and they’d say, ‘You’ll be back; you’ll be all right. ’”

His rehabilitation lasted more than two years before he finally returned to the Octagon in 2020. Three years later, the same Sean Strickland who was once written off as the man who would never fight again instead pulled off one of the biggest upsets in UFC history by defeating Israel Adesanya to become the UFC middleweight champion, completing one of MMA’s most remarkable comeback stories. The same is the case for his personal life as well.

Today, he’s happily married to a woman named KJ, and thankfully, he’s doing much better in life, having survived some really harrowing moments.