sean strickland picked his dream celebrity fight. he went with the trans guy from the christopher nolan movie

via PinkNews and Yardbarker.

The question was which celebrity he would most like to fight. Sean Strickland, the UFC middleweight champion, a man who is paid a living wage to fight other professional fighters, went with Elliot Page.

The remark comes from a Q&A Strickland did in late August, per Yardbarker, and it found its audience this week when the combat sports account Championship Rounds posted the clip. PinkNews counted 14.7 million views by Wednesday. The two outlets that transcribed it do not agree on every word, which tells you something about the diction, but both have him landing on the same three: "that's an easy dub."

A dub. Easy. Over a 39-year-old Canadian actor who currently appears as a Greek soldier in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and does not fight people for a living.

It is not the first pass. Yardbarker reports that Strickland went after Page in June over boxing training videos the actor had posted on Instagram, and took a swing at the transition while he was there. PinkNews notes that also in June, Strickland shared an AI-generated video of himself attacking Dylan Mulvaney. Some men take up pickleball in their thirties. This one took up imagining fights with trans people who have not agreed to be in them.

Page has not responded, and there is no reason he should. We have watched what happens when a combat sport decides a queer athlete is fair game, most recently when the first out gay man to compete in Olympic judo left the mat with three plates in his jaw. The difference is that a fight requires two people to show up.

There is a version of this where a champion picks someone his own size. Strickland has access to that version. He has an entire division of it, with a ranking, and the men in it have all agreed in writing.