Despite the ugly scene it cause, Laura Sanko wasn’t offended when Sean Strickland and Dricus Du Plessis brawled at the T-Mobile Arena during UFC 296.
The trash talk that started it all? She could do without that.
“I’m not some prude ... I realize what game we’re in, right?”’ Sanko said on the Believe You Me video podcast hosted by ex-UFC middleweight champ Michael Bisping. “I actually prefer guys have physical fights than do this s*** if I’m being honest, because that way the family doesn’t get dragged into it. And that way there’s not statements and altered photographs that live on the internet for years and years and years for your kids to have to Google.
“When they get of age, that’s the stuff that really bothers me is the fact that things that are said now are permanent. If you’re going to get in a fight with each other, go for it. I actually like the fact that [Sean] fought Dricus, and I like how Dricus has handled the whole situation.”
Strickland attacked Du Plessis – before asking Gilbert Burns’ children to step aside – one day after the South African fighter mocked his experience with child abuse. Strickland was clearly agitated by the remarks, and after the UFC sat them feet from each other, he initiated a fight with his UFC 297 opponent. Security quickly intervened, and Strickland was bounced from the arena.
Du Plessis later addressed the incident by questioning Strickland’s mental fortitude while also disavowing child abuse. He also called Strickland a “hypocrite” for attacking UFC welterweight Ian Machado Garry and his wife while claiming trash talk about child abuse was off limits; Garry later did the same in a response to Strickland’s interview.
“I’m so sick of how the way that people talk shit now in the game has changed,” Sanko said. “You’ve got people out there saying there isn’t a line. Well, there is a line, because you don’t see these guys using racial slurs. They would never, because they know better, right? It’s a line, we do not cross. There is a line, it’s just, it keeps moving, and I think we need to move it back where we don’t talk about wives. We don’t talk about kids and there’s some amount of decorum.
“I miss your s*** talk honestly. I miss Chael [Sonnen], who could dress someone down in the most creative way, and he wouldn’t even cuss. I like the creativity of attacking the fighter himself. Fine, you wanna call him a p****? You want to call him blah, blah, blah. I’m not innocent in that way. But you have to quit bringing in third parties, who have very little, or if nothing, to do with what’s going on. And I’m not necessarily even like saying that Ian Gary’s situation is blameless, because he did that to other people. ... Everyone is a huge hypocrites. Ian’s a hypocrite. Sean’s a hypocrite.
“Like how about we all just stop being such a******* and bring it back a little bit?”
Sanko called herself a “huge fan” of Strickland as a fighter and person, particularly in light of his revealing interview with comedian Theo Von. The UFC middleweight champ broke down as he described his abusive childhood.
“I watched his video with Theo Von, and ... I commended him for it,” Sanko said. “I thought it was incredibly moving. I thought it was honest. I thought it was open. I think he will help a lot of people by being as vulnerable as he was, especially being known to for a guy who you wouldn’t think would do that.
“So on one hand, I’m giving Sean all the flowers in the world, but you can’t in the same conversation say attacking wives is off limits and then call this woman a pedophile, which she clearly is not, OK. She’s not a pedophile.
“So you literally just said, you can’t attack people’s wives, and you called his wife something horrendous, and then did it more than once, and did it where the whole internet’s gonna see that. Her kids are gonna read it. So I applaud Ian for saying something, to be honest with you. I just wish we would all stop.”
Below is Sanko’s full interview on Believe You Me.
