Sean
Strickland has warned Dricus Du
Plessis of dire consequences if he crosses the line with his
trash talk.
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Strickland is slated to defend his middleweight strap for the first
time against Du Plessis at
UFC 297 on Jan. 20 at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
The two have developed serious bad blood since Du Plessis brought
up Strickland’s abusive childhood during a seasonal press
conference last month in response to the champ alleging a sexual
relationship between the South African and his coach. Strickland
went on to attack Du Plessis while attending
UFC 296 the very next day.
Strickland subsequently went on a podcast with comedian Theo Von,
opening up about his
childhood trauma in detail . Du Plessis has since stated that
he doesn’t harbor any ill will towards Strickland, although he
doesn’t regret anything he said.
While Strickland also seemingly doesn’t want things to escalate
further, he has a message for his upcoming opponent. The champ,
infamous for his road rage videos, claims he would even go to the
extent of stabbing Du Plessis if “Stillknocks” crosses the limit
with his trash talk leading up to UFC 297.
“Remember when I attacked Dricus? I actually sent him a message,”
Strickland said on his YouTube channel. “‘Dude listen, Dricus, we’re gonna go
try to murder each other, but if you bring that s—t up again, I
will f—ing stab you.’ Press conference, weigh-in … he was cool
about it. I’m not telling you I don’t wanna fight you, Dricus, I’m
not saying you’re not a good fighter. I’m just saying that’s a line
that when crossed, it transcends fighting. If I go to Canada and
you bring that up, guess what? I’m gonna go to jail, they’re gonna
deport me and we spent eight weeks of training for no f—-ing
reason.”
“If I had a f—ing gun on me at that UFC [crowd] fight, if I had a
gun on me bro, there’s a chance bro … there’s a chance. I don’t
wanna throw away my life for something dumb. And that’s why I’m
always like, ‘Hey guys, let’s just be nice to each other.’ The best
thing I could do was 12-6 elbows to the back of the head, if I want
to do the most damage. If you look in the video, right at the very
end, I went to go f—-g bite him. If you slow down the video, you’ll
see me grab his head and I went to take a chunk out of him. I’m
almost positive I got a little bit of hair in my teeth. The reason
why I didn’t fully commit as I did it, I was like ‘Sean there’s no
coming back from this, the moment you take a piece from him.’ Watch
the video.”