Strickland's sparring head kick left Parsons barely able to train for Contender Series

Jonny Parsons entered his 2021 Dana White’s Contender Series bout having barely trained, after former UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland knocked him out cold with a head kick during a sparring session at Syndicate MMA in Las Vegas six weeks earlier.

Parsons, who faces Jose Henrique Souza (9-1) at UFC Vegas 124 on Saturday, November 7 at Meta Apex in Las Vegas, recalled the incident in detail. He said he was tiring midway through the round when Strickland — then training at Syndicate before later settling at Xtreme Couture — picked up on a pattern in his head movement and unleashed a one-two combination followed by a head kick.

“I slipped the one, I rolled the two, and right as I came out of the roll, boom — head kick across the jaw, across the face,” Parsons told Danny Podolsky. “I faceplanted out cold. I only know what it looks like ‘cause I watched the footage from the security camera afterward. Sean Strickland was nice enough to drive me home that day. That was six weeks before my Contender Series fight. So going into my Contender Series fight, I really did almost no training.”

Despite the disrupted camp, Parsons (9-3) won his Contender Series bout by split decision to secure a UFC contract. He went on to win his UFC debut by stoppage in 2023, but has not competed since, citing injuries sustained from pushing himself too hard in training.

Strickland, a two-time UFC middleweight titleholder, was at the time an up-and-coming fighter sharing mat space at Syndicate before establishing himself as one of the division’s most formidable competitors. The anecdote offers a rare glimpse into the physical toll of high-level sparring and the risks fighters absorb long before fight night.

Parsons’ return against Souza marks his first appearance in the Octagon in over two years.