So what exactly will be said by Sean Strickland — UFC fighter, championship contender, former Neo-Nazi, son of a drunkard, grandson to white trash “pieces of s…”, and arguably the most polarising MMA fighter on planet earth — when he finally lifts that first microphone Down Under?

Truly, Sportsbet could run a book, such is the interest.

Especially given how in the two years now since this fella first admitted to wanting to kill another human being – of “fantasising” about it – Strickland and his words have been branded everything from homophobic, misogynistic, even racist through to … well, outright hilarious.

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Indeed, some will tell you that just like Hulking Hogan’s bluster about saying your prayers and taking your vitamins, much of what Strickland does – and more specifically, says — is a gimmick.

A work.

With those close to the fighter adamant he has no lust for putting strangers in the ground, women back in the kitchen or, as he once famously stated, having Russia nuke the States just so his countrymen might grow some ball.

No, Strickland, they insist, is running through the UFC with a smile and a wink.

Explaining that while not everyone finds it funny, he does.

With even the fighter’s big time agent, Tim Simpson – a Perth boy doing more than OK in the world of UFC management – describing his polarising Californian client as a “sweetheart”.

Others however, aren’t so sure.

Take, say, Member for Port Macquarie, Leslie Williams.

A concerned politician who in NSW parliament just the other day, grilled Sports Minister Stephen Kamper over his Government’s spending of $16 million to bring the UFC generally — and Strickland specifically – Down Under next week.

Yet regardless of your take on the bloke, the only guarantee is that early Saturday morning, a fighter ranked No.5 in the middleweight division – and carrying underdog odds of $5 — will jet into Sydney for next Sunday’s UFC 293 headliner against the greatest middleweight now, and perhaps ever.

At 34, Israel Adesanya is the UFC’s biggest star not named Conor McGregor.

A fighting phenom who, apart from throwing some of the best hands of any human being ever, also binges anime, drives a McLaren 720S Spider and, occasionally, sports frosted tips.

But, right now, the fight isn’t what anyone is talking about.

No, instead, everyone is wondering about the brawl that will be fight week … and exactly what the bloody hell Strickland will say.

Not only at the UFC press conference, either, but the weigh-ins, in Twittersphere, on George Street, at open workouts, for ESPN, Fox Sports Australia, even to that first camera he greets after passing through Customs.

After all, the bloke has ignited more than a couple of UFC bonfires with his words.

Just as he has hammered journalists, spoken of being incarcerated, and used a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast to reiterate – who knows how many times – about wanting to take that life.

Elsewhere, this son of a drunken father has also spoken of continually finding his old man’s porn tapes in the VCR, thwacking him over the head with a guitar, even encouraging him while sprawled out in bed, gun to his own head, to ‘squeeze the trigger, man’.

Same as Strickland has also admitted to drawing Swastikas on his arm in elementary school, while dreaming of becoming that Ed Norton skinhead from American History X.

Which for genuine UFC fight fans is nothing new.

Same as Strickland’s Dexter admissions, while intriguing, are hardly unique. With Deontay Wilder, in 2019, telling the world he wanted to take a man’s life in the ring – one of countless such threats among practitioners of the sweet science.

But as for how Strickland is seen among casuals?

Well, earlier this month in was Port Macquarie’s Williams who questioned the State government’s decision to splash so much cash on bringing a fella like Strickland to the Harbour City.

“The UFC is an internationally recognised, extremely popular sport,” Sports Minister Kamper said in response. “Just like boxing, just like wrestling.

“No one’s supporting the comments of one individual, but whatever the case UFC has got an enormous following across the world.

“It’s not my call whether Mr Strickland participates, but we support the UFC and we’re looking forward to the UFC.”

And so, we wait.

Wondering exactly what will be sprouted in coming days by a fighter best known for that Helwani interview back in 2019, where Strickland revealed of his upbringing: “For me, I was just really f…ing angry.

“I was so angry, I actually went through this weird neo-Nazi, white supremacist phase when I was younger, and I got kicked out of school for, like, hate crimes, all this crazy s….

“I had a lot of f…ed up influences in my life, that it felt so good to f…ing hate something.

“I would walk down the street with just a knife or like a rock hoping to kill somebody. And when I started (MMA) training I realised, ‘Man, you’re just f…ing angry.’”

The interview followed Strickland, after a win earlier that year against Uriah Hall, telling journalists afterwards: “I would love nothing more than to kill somebody in the ring.

“Nothing more. It would make me super happy. I would own that s…, too. I don’t know if that made me liable, I might have to say ‘I’m sorry’ if the cops came. But I would own that s….”

Quizzed on his Neo-Nazi phase, Strickland attributed much of it to his grandfather, a “big, piece of shit” who “filled your head with crazy shit”.

And the result?

“You’re in seventh grade spouting off like Nazis,” he recounted. “I was drawing swastikas on my arm walking around in school. Like, I didn’t know what the f… that was.”

In separate interviews, Strickland has also spoken at length of an abusive family home.

“I remember hugging my mom’s leg in the kitchen,” he said. “Like pre-elementary school.

“My dad all f…ing drunk and telling my mom, ‘I’m gonna f…ing cut you up in little pieces, bury you in the backyard in a bottle of acid”.

At 17, he also walked into his father’s bedroom and encouraged him to take his own life, recalling: “My dad was laying in bed one day with a .45.

“I f…ing walked up and he was talking about suicide.

“I said ‘You should f…ing do it …Your wife left you, you’re unemployed, you’re a f…ing drug addict. You should do it.’

“He didn’t f…ing do it and died at 50 something of cancer, f…ing miserable.”

The fighter has also detailed his experience with white supremacists in prison.

“You walk in [to jail], and if you’re white, which you know, I am a white man, the white supremacists come up to you and give you the tour,” he recalled.

“They say, well, here’s the rules, they help you make your bed. They lay down the rules. Here’s the thing, you can’t go to the bathroom while we’re having dinner, and if you shower with a black guy, you gotta fight him…”

“I’m like, ‘listen, man, I’m not really racist … He goes, ‘let me stop you right now, if you don’t join us, you’re pretty much on your own. You’re kinda f…ed’

“I walk past the segregation of black cells, and you have all of these mother…ers grabbing the bars, threatening me, telling me they are going to f…ing kill me … What I’m trying to say is I’m not made for prison.”

More recently, and perhaps tellingly given some of the above, Strickland his made headlines for saying of women: “We need to go back to taking women out of the workforce.

“Maybe that’s where we f…ed up, guys.

“We need to go back to 1942. Maybe 1958 after we f…ed up the Germans, we need to put women back in the kitchen.

“Only one man needs to be working. I think as a collective man group, we need to elect somebody who is gonna put women back in the kitchen, put one man working, raise the wages, and build the f…ing wall.”

So as for this, again, being a work?

Speaking about the fighter late last year, UFC analyst Chael Sonnen insisted Strickland was “not crazy”, but instead a decent guy — and “gentleman” – who has gone and sunk his teeth into the ‘I’m crazy’ market.

“I just want you guys to meet him, I really do,” Sonnen said.

“Even just in passing, I hope you see him and I hope you go up and say hello.”

Come Monday, Australians will have that chance.