Robert Whittaker believes the scuffle between Sean Strickland and Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 296 was staged. For the No. 3-ranked middleweight fighter, there are elements giving away the true nature of the fight, stating that the act “was just for entertainment.”
Strickland and Du Plessis momentarily stole the spotlight at UFCE 296 last weekend after brawling while sitting with the audience. In the event, the two were given exposure, with both trying to antagonize each other. The American then gestured shooting a gun to “Stillknocks.” Things then went more verbal. Strickland later asked Gilbert Burns’s son to move and immediately jumped and pounced on the South African fighter.
The melee later made the rounds online, making the scheduled UFC 297 bout of the two more interesting. Nonetheless, not everyone is buying the scene, including Whittaker, who believes it was faked for the sake of entertainment.
“I thought it was staged, mate, honestly,” Whittaker said on MMArcade Podcast. “Because it was weird. It was weird the way it happened. You saw the way Strickland was like, ‘Move aside, please.’ Makes sense, but then he jumps in like WWE style. The way he was punching, the way he was kind of like, I don’t know, fake punching to the back of Dricus.
“Maybe it was just for entertainment, and which case, you can’t really give him anything for it. I don’t know. It’s a bit silly. He’s the champ.”
As pointed out in the interview, the camera angle, Strickland’s hits, and UFC CEO Dana White’s sitting arrangement were the main giveaways, even though the executive himself admitted the last was his mistake.
“What kind of an a**hole sits Strickland next to du Plessis,” White asked, admitting his fault. “This a–hole, that’s who. … I do every seating assignment every week. How f—ing stupid is that? I mean, seriously, I don’t know what humans you can sit Strickland next to, but definitely not Du Plessis. I don’t know how I missed that.”
“It’s my job to make sure that stuff doesn’t happen. If I wasn’t an a**hole, those two wouldn’t have been sitting next to each other. It blows my mind that I let that slip.”
Real or not, the chaos certainly added to the interesting moments of the event. Even more, it adds to the thrill fans can expect at UFC 297, where the two fighters will let their knuckles prove whether their trash talk and recent brawl are all just gimmicks or something more.