If it looked like Sean O'Malley and Dricus Du Plessis’ words struck a nerve with Sean Strickland, that’s because apparently they did.
During a chaotic news conference to promote the first three UFC title fights of 2024, new lows in trash talk might’ve been reached as things spiraled out of control when O’Malley and Du Plessis invoked Strickland’s past abusive relationship with his father, a difficult subject the UFC middleweight champion has opened up about in the past.
Strickland may have crossed the line first when he put UFC bantamweight champ O’Malley on blast for “trying to let dudes f*ck his wife.”
That prompted O’Malley to also get person: “At least my dad didn’t f*ck me,” he said.
Later in the news conference, Strickland got into a heated verbal confrontation with Du Plessis, whom he meets Jan. 20 in the UFC 297 headliner. Strickland told Du Plessis “your coach will finish you in the back like you’re f*cking used to,” alluding to a sexual relationship between them.
In response, Du Plessis also leaned into O’Malley’s abusive childhood.
“You think your dad beat the sh*t out of you? Your dad doesn’t have sh*t on me,” Du Plessis said. “Every childhood memory you have is gonna come back when I’m in there with you.”
On Friday night, Strickland said the words hurled at him from O’Malley and Du Plessis were “an utter disgrace” in a post on X (formerly Twitter):
I expect nothing less from O’Malley and Dricus. Next time come at me as a man… Clearly you don’t know what that means……
I just wanna say one thing that I feel needs to be said.. There are a lot of kids out there who have been abused and molested and it’s a damn tragic thing that forever changes you. How you function, how you view the world, how you treat relationships, how you handle addiction and for someone to put you down with that level of trauma on a world stage is an utter disgrace.. I have a big following of people who suffered trauma, molestation and I will tell you that it’s not funny to me, whatever you’ve gone through or have been through isn’t funny to me…….. I hope you all understand that these are weak men who don’t understand hardship, they don’t understand what it’s like to live with demons… Forever a struggle they will never understand.
While Strickland’s sentiment is understandable, it’s unusual to see him get sensitive about a subject given his disregard for people’s feelings. During Friday’s news conference, for example, Strickland showed no respect for LGBTQ people or women as he freely shouted homophobic slurs and vulgarities.
Friday’s news conference was the first time Strickland acknowledged that a line could be crossed with trash talk.
