06 September 2023 , 08:03
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UFC middleweight title contender Sean Strickland claimed he "committed assault" on a fan who told him he would be knocked out by Israel Adesanya this weekend.
The controversial challenger has travelled to Australia to take on Adesanya in the main event of UFC 293. And as he walked the streets meeting supporters with his girlfriend while adjusting to the 17-hour time difference from his home in Las Vegas, he was approached by one over-eager supporter of the champion.
Adesanya is a huge fan-favourite in Australia, and Strickland claims one of his supporters approached him, joking he was about to be stopped in the biggest fight of his career. He told Fox Sports Australia he immediately threw an uppercut at the fan, and joked he was happy they hadn't pressed charges.
“Boom, right in the guts,” Strickland said. “I’d only been in Australia a day and already I’d committed an assault. Initially, I thought the guy was coming up for a photo. Because anybody who wants a photo, man, I love the fans. But if you want to come up to me and run your f***ing mouth, I’ll smack you like I smack anybody else. Uppercut to his stomach. Then I walked away. But if I see the guy again, man, no problems. ... I’ll thank him for not pressing charges.”
Strickland has courted controversy with a series of controversial outbursts in the past, including his insistence that he has wanted to kill either an opponent or someone on the street. And it is believed that there was resistance from higher-ups to bringing him into the UFC 293 main event when top challenger Dricus Du Plessis was ruled out.
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The event is the first fight in a $16million State government deal which will see the promotion put on shows at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney. And promoter Dana White has insisted that the UFC now "have people around him" to assure that such an incident, which he has played down, won't happen again.
“Do you know where the news came from that he punched a fan?” White asked reporters at a press conference last night when quizzed on the incident. “Yeah, [the news came from him]. He’s beauty. He played it up more than whatever and was jokingly... The fan and him are cool. Going into this, I knew. I knew what this week was going to be like. Yes, we’re prepared for it and yes we have people around him now, so he won’t be punching people in the stomach anymore – for fun or not for fun.”