The full incident between Sean Strickland
and Dricus Du Plessis at
#UFC296 tonight.Bring on
#UFC297 in January! pic.twitter.com/HQt0Uj1jiv— UFC (@ufc)
December 17, 2023
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Gilbert
Burns recently shared some insider information about the
cagedside brawl between Sean
Strickland and Dricus Du
Plessis at
UFC 296.
Strickland will defend his middleweight strap against Du Plessis at
UFC 297 on Jan. 20 in Toronto. The bad blood started during a
seasonal press conference to promote their fight, where Du Plessis
brought up Strickland’s abusive childhood. The two were seated
close to each other while in attendance at UFC 296 the next day,
which also led to speculation about the brawl being staged.
However, Burns, who along with his family had a first row seat to
the whole episode, claims the scuffle was real. Before leaping over
chairs to attack Du Plessis, Strickland could be seen asking Burns’
wife and child to move. “Durinho” claims he received intimation of
the impending brawl even before that from Strickland, who had
already told him something might go down.
“That was my wife and kid,” Burns said on the
Jaxxon podcast. “And then when Sean came, he came and then he
kind of looked at the guy. I think he’s already like ‘Man s—t.’ You
brought your wife and your kids, and I say yes. And he said, ‘Yeah
this fricking guy is right there. I might do stuff with this
guy.’
“That was before the fight! When he walked in, he already had the
thing in his head. [Strickland said] If I do something, I’ll give
you the heads up. Whenever the things start going down, this guy
[Strickland] kind of look at me and said, ‘Now!’”
Burns further revealed that while Strickland can be seen throwing
multiple shots in the video, no one connected flush with
anything.
“They hit each other a little bit,” Burns said. “People didn’t see
that side of the camera. We saw because it was right there. There
was kind of a little bit back-and-forth, but it was nothing clean.
And then Dana [White] came after the fight, like what happened, did
anyone get hurt, anyone need anything? No, nothing happened to
anyone.”