If there was a beef between Khalil Rountree and Sean Strickland, it is no more.

More than a year ago Strickland, a fighter generally regarded as being among the outspoken on the UFC roster, released a video on social media in which he said that Rountree “sucks,” criticising this weekend’s world title contender for various altercations that allegedly occurred while they trained together.

But Rountree, who will attempt to seize the UFC light heavyweight title from Alex Pereira at UFC 307 in Salt Lake City, Utah on Saturday, told the media — including The Mac Life — on Wednesday that Strickland issued him a personal apology and walked back his prior statements.

“Honestly, the last interaction that I had with Sean Strickland was at the UFC PI. It was literally the day after Dan Ige stepped in for that fight on like three hours, four hours notice, or something like that,” Rountree said.

Out of the blue, Sean Strickland came up to me. He approached me, and he just said, like, ‘Khalil, I apologise, I’m a dumbass. I actually kind of like you. I think you’re liberal, but, you know, but overall, I like you, or I respect you,’ something along those lines.

He added: “So what I took it as is, almost like squashing whatever beef, you know what I mean, or just saying, like, ‘Look dude, I am who I am. I’m gonna say what I’m gonna say, but I’m coming here to personally shake your hand, tell you I think you’re a liberal, but you know, to a certain level, I respect you.’ You know what I mean? It was like that.

“So I took it as like, OK, you’re coming here to kind of make the peace. I left it at that. So now, anything moving forward, like anything that’s said, or whatever, I got that sort of my memory bank, so I know that there’s really no issue. It’s really just talk, and I won’t concern myself with it.”

You can watch Rountree’s full comments in the video above.