Joshua Van Weighs in on Sean Strickland's Pay Dispute With Dana White

UFC flyweight champion Joshua Van has weighed in on the public contract dispute between middleweight champion Sean Strickland and UFC boss Dana White, siding with the promotion's CEO. Strickland recently expressed frustration over financial offers to defend his title against Nassourdine Imavov, claiming he feels underpaid and even threatening to vacate his belt and fight out his deal in a different weight class to reach free agency. White pushed back against those complaints, pointing out that Strickland signed a new contract in May before winning the title from Khamzat Chimaev.

Speaking on Outta Pocket, Van stated that Strickland handled the situation poorly by airing his grievances publicly instead of negotiating privately with UFC brass. "He just signed a contract in May and fought Khamzat, and then he won," Van said. "Instead of going on Twitter and going on all that [expletive], he should have talked to Dana and said, 'I wanna renegotiate.' Behind closed doors.

Then the boss would have been like, 'OK, let's talk about this, what you want?' You just beat the boogeyman. Now it's a whole mess. If you work at a 9-to-5 job and you go off to your boss and you're like, pay me this much.

I don't know how that's gonna work."

The 25-year-old Van, who recently defended his 125-pound championship with a decision victory over Alexandre Pantoja—marking his third title bout victory in a 10-month span that also included a fifth-round TKO of Tatsuro Taira—expressed contentment with his own financial standing. While acknowledging fighters' desires for higher pay, Van made it clear he appreciates what the promotion has done for his career.

"I'm getting paid good," Van said with a laugh. "I think they pay me good amount; I don't know, but fighter that think they deserve more or—like, should we get paid more? Yes, but, I don't know, I'm happy where I'm at. I start from zero to now, the UFC literally made me where I'm at, gave me everything that I got right now."