Pro tennis player Taylor Fritz says he accidentally clicked “like” on a homophobic post by former UFC fighter and Sean Strickland, who was upset that February is designated LGBTQ History Month.
The post Fritz liked was posted by Strickland on X (formerly Twitter) last week:
How did the gays get an entire f—ing month lmao
Could you picture Washington seeing pride month…
Get off the sidelines and into the game
Our weekly playbook is packed with everything from locker room chatter to pressing LGBTQ sports issues.
“is this to honor the fight for independence?” ”The men who died”
Ummm no actually there is a day for that…. it’s ummm actually to honor two dudes f—ing…. lmao!!!
Someone alerted Fritz a week later that he liked the post by Strickland — whom we have called out for his repeated hatred of gay people — and the tennis player yesterday posted that he liked it by accident.
Wrote Fritz:
Holy sh*t I just got sent this and had a heart attack…. I DEFINITELY didn’t purposefully like this, I was looking at Stricklands profile a couple days ago cause of all the news he was in while in Vegas. I had to of accidentally liked that while scrolling the replies but wow just want to make it clear for anyone that doesn’t know me i absolutely don’t stand for any of this and if u we’re to look at my likes it’s either all gaming/tennis things I would NEVER do that on purpose
Fritz, 26, gets a pass here. I have also accidentally liked something while absentmindedly scrolling on X and then quickly unliked it, though never on something as hateful as what Strickkand wrote. It seems like an honest mistake by Fritz.
What seems to clinch the fact that this was an accident are Fritz’s comments in 2022 where he said he would be very supportive of an openly gay pro men’s tennis player.
“It’s strange [that no top player has come out], because I think it would be accepted. No one on the tour would have a problem with that,” he told the tennis website Clay in a question and answer interview.
Clay: “What’s going on with men homosexuality in tennis? No one talks about it, no one comes out. It’s a huge taboo.”
Fritz: “I’m not sure if there are homosexual tennis players in the top 100. I don’t know. Maybe people think behind close doors we know or something. Statistically speaking, they should be. Statistically. But not that I know. I think is odd, because I feel like a player would be accepted. Myself and my friends, other players on tour wouldn’t have any issues with it, it would be totally normal and I think people would be accepting. I couldn’t tell you why [no one has come out]. Obviously anytime that would be a lot of big news and maybe people just don’t want to be in the spotlight, maybe they don’t want the distraction of getting all the attention and stuff like that.”
Memo to Fritz: Never look at Strickland’s X feed again. It will only make you dumber and expose you to hate.
