Roman Dolidze Details Intense First Sparring Session With Sean Strickland

Roman Dolidze and Sean Strickland needed outside intervention when they first sparred together.

Dolidze and Strickland are now teammates at the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas. While Dolidze now understands Strickland better, things weren’t always this cordial between the two middleweights.

Strickland is known for expressing his unabashed and controversial opinions on everything under the sun. Dolidze previously couldn’t fathom the former champ slamming his own family over issues like child abuse. However, the Georgian gradually stopped being critical of Strickland as he understands the difference in their upbringings.

In signature fashion, Strickland also went unnaturally hard at Dolidze in their very first sparring session. According to Dolidze, Strickland’s need to test every new guy in the gym stems from his own insecurities.

“In beginning I was very critical with him,” Dolidze recently told Home of Fight. “We had like bad argument but no more. First of all, I know we’re raised different and I can’t criticize him just because he’s raised different… He sees [the] world like this and there are certain things [that] make him like that… First time when I saw him in sparring – he’s the type of guy, when he see someone new, he wants to test it. Because I think first of all he’s proving himself. That’s his fault. And first time when we see each other, it was sparring day, we fought, like it was bad. People stopped [us].”

Strickland will try to reclaim the middleweight title against Dricus Du Plessis in the main event at UFC 312 at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia. Meanwhile, Dolidze headlines his first ever UFC card in a rematch against Marvin Vettori at UFC Fight Night 254 on March 15 at the Apex in Las Vegas. Dolidze is coming off consecutive victories over Anthony Smith and Kevin Holland that saw him bounce back from losses against Vettori and Nassourdine Imavov.