Strickland on Du Plessis fracas: ‘I bit him’

Sean Strickland has garnered for himself a reputation as as wild man throughout his rise of prominence as a UFC champion. 

This was perhaps best evident in his UFC 296 crowd brawl with his upcoming opponent Dricus du Plessis, which came about after the two rivals were seated near to each other at the Las Vegas event — after which Dana White, who personally chooses the seating charts for these events, issued a ‘mea culpa’ to the media.

But while some grainy footage of their brawl appeared online and on the broadcast, Strickland has said that he’s glad another angle of the exchange didn’t make it out — because, according to the reigning middleweight champion, he tried to a bite a hunk of flesh out of the South African whom he is scheduled to meet in the UFC 297 main event later this month.

“I’m so happy they didn’t get it from a right angle, I bit him,” Strickland said to the This Past Weekend podcast, as noted by MMA Fighting.

“I sh*t you not. Whenever he went into me, I remember at that moment, he tackles me and right there, you see my head goes up towards him, I started thinking how can hurt this man? I’m going take a f*cking chunk out of him. I’m going to bite his f*cking ear off.

“I remember telling myself at that moment, ‘Sean, you can’t do that, that’s something you can’t walk away from.’ If you do that, then I’m going to jail.”

Earlier in the podcast, Strickland explained that it was a comment made about his family by Du Plessis during a press conference that set him into a rage, and directly led to the fracas which occurred a day later.

“Whenever Dricus goes on there and he jokes about that sh*t dude, you have no idea. I’ll f*cking kill you, you have no idea. I think the issue is too, when you’re a kid and you’re made to be a victim your whole life, as an adult, you’re like never again. I’ll f*cking kill you.”