Written by Sean Strickland | Photo by Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC
Sean Strickland and Dan Henderson aren’t on the same page when it comes to why their training partnership dissolved.
In the past, Henderson has discussed how the future UFC champion’s trash talk at Team Quest in California rubbed his gym mates the wrong way. Henderson said Strickland was “too disrespectful” at times and it got to the point where the team parted ways with Strickland.
Henderson shared his account of the breakdown again in a recent interview on Mike Perry’s Overdogs Podcast.
“You know, he got in little argument matches with some of the guys that thought he was going too hard,” Henderson said. “Then he would go online and talk shit about him and he did it a little bit too much. Just more socially, I didn’t care what happened in the room. When you send it out to everybody to hear all that shit, it’s just disrespectful for your training partners, guys that are in there training with you to help you out as well. He just did it too many times, I warned him a bunch, and then finally just said, ‘Hey dude, you’ve got to go.’
“But he was a good training partner and I enjoyed having him in there and liked having a guy that is in there that goes hard.”
Strickland responded to a post on the Overdogs Instagram page, disputing Henderson’s version of the story.
“None of this is true,” Strickland wrote. “I was Dan’s main training partner for his last fight. He retired, the fight team fell off and when it was time to renew my membership I left… but he is correct I would make fun of the fight team constantly.
“They would do yoga and skip sparring lol [Keith Berry] I’m talking about you haha funny thing is we’re both at [Xtreme Couture] and spar regularly now.”
Strickland has developed a reputation for making offensive and inflammatory comments and is also notorious for his in-gym behavior, whether it’s ruffling his teammates’ feathers or offering to beat up influencers.
That behavior didn’t stop Strickland from becoming a UFC champion. He defeated Israel Adesanya for the middleweight title at UFC 293, then lost it in his first defense to Dricus du Plessis four months later.
Strickland admitted he was prone to losing his temper at Team Quest, but still joked it was because of his training partners doing other exercises besides sparring.
“No bro, I lost it on multiple occasions when it was sparring day and 90 percent of the fight team was doing yoga skipping pro practice haha,” Strickland replied to an Instagram comment. “Massive gym blowups from me.”
Though Strickland and Henderson disagree on why Strickland’s relationship with Team Quest ended, the two have plenty of mutual respect and Strickland made sure to praise Henderson in his replies.
“Dan is the man though,” Strickland wrote. “And if he didn’t retire and seen what I seen with most the guys skipping class to go do yoga he would have been throwing H bombs, too.”