Strickland and Pyfer are two of the top Americans competing in the UFC middleweight division. Both have big fights coming up. Strickland will face rising contender Anthony Hernandez in the main event of UFC Houston on February 21. Pyfer, meanwhile, will face middleweight legend Israel Adesanya in the main event of UFC Seattle on March 28.
Like Strickland and Pyfer, Hernandez is a U.S. citizen. However, he has Mexican ancestry. That was enough for Strickland to share an AI-generated image of himself dressed as an ICE agent as he arrested his would-be opponent.
Sean Strickland via Instagram… 😭
(via @SStricklandMMA) pic.twitter.com/EsOBzn7C4Y
— Championship Rounds (@ChampRDS) January 15, 2026
On Instagram, his fans seemed to find his post humorous, but on X the reactions were less warm.
“What an embarrassing pile of s**t,” one fan wrote.
Joe Pyfer follows Sean Strickland with a similar post about UFC rival
Unlike Strickland, Pyfer and Hernandez, Adesanya is not a U.S. citizen and has never lived in the country. Instead, he was born in Nigeria and now lives in New Zealand. Nevertheless, Pyfer took the opportunity to follow Strickland’s lead and shared a very similar image of him arresting the upcoming UFC Seattle opponent.
I hope Izzy KOs him pic.twitter.com/ndLwJhARYF
— Dovy🔌 (@DovySimuMMA) January 16, 2026
Similar to the post Strickland shared, Pyfer’s meeting received mixed reactions. Some fans found it offensive, but others found it funny.
“It’s a joke bro, he literally said that in an interview that he thought [Adesanya] was the [middleweight] GOAT,” one Strickland fan wrote, “stop being soft.”
Wherever you stand, there’s clearly a lot of pride at stake in these two big upcoming middleweight matchups. The stakes are also very high, as the winners of each fight are among the top contenders in the division.
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