Dricus Du Plessis opens up on the DM he received from Sean Strickland

Dricus Du Plessis has revealed that Sean Strickland sent him a DM after their altercation at UFC 296.

Du Plessis and Strickland sat a few rows in front of each other at UFC 296, where some trash-talking led to an eventual physical altercation. Shortly after their cage side skirmish, Strickland revealed on his podcast that he sent a message to Du Plessis, and at UFC 297 media, the South African opened up on what was said in the text.

“So, this happened the day after the altercation in the crowd. I’m talking, I arrived in South Africa, as we were on the runaway still taxing to where we got off,” Dricus Du Plessis said at UFC 297 media day. “I opened my phone and saw a DM from Sean Strickland. I thought it would be a fan page, hate mail, or something like that. But, it actually is Sean Strickland’s page, I do follow him, and it said, something along the lines of ‘listen, this is what happened, I’m sorry what I said about your coach and you but if there’s anything that’s crossing the line and listen, we sell a fight and all that.

“But if there’s anything out of line that I said that you want me to pull back, I’ll apologize, I’ll even take back what I said. I’ll remove posts.’ I feel this is not a great move, but he brought it up. I would have never told the media about this. This happened five weeks ago. I don’t want to expose a man in that way. It’s not my style. I was actually surprised that he made it public that he did message me because I didn’t want to out him on that. But, simply talking about it. He said if there’s anything he shouldn’t say, he’ll lay back but if I bring up anything with his childhood again, he said ‘I’ll kill you and ruin your life and mine way before we step into the cage’ something like that. That’s exactly his words,” Du Plessis said.

“So I’m like okay, this poor guy. This seems serious. I feel bad for him. I just replied and said ‘listen, there’s nothing you can say that has any effect on me. Like go crazy.’ You are talking about me kissing other dudes? I have more photos… There’s nothing he can say that can get under my skin. I’m the mentally strongest fighter in the world, and I told him, you can literally say whatever you want, all is fair in love and war. But I won’t say anything about your childhood again, cool. That’s how it came down,” Dricus Du Plessis concluded.

It was a surprising message to receive from Sean Strickland, but Dricus Du Plessis says that’s all behind him as he’s focused on UFC 297 and becoming the middleweight champion.