Aussie Gov Almost Canceled Strickland Over Fan Punch

Sean Strickland almost got canceled the day he landed in Australia after punching a fan. The Aussie government was ready to toss him out following reports of the incident, but cooler heads prevailed.

Sean Strickland was *this* close to getting yanked from UFC 293 after punching a fan in Sydney, Australia.

The UFC reportedly wasn’t hot on Strickland getting his title shot against Israel Adesanya down under to begin with, and had Jared Cannonier on call just in case “Tarzan” did anything to embarrass the company as it kicked off a $16 million dollar deal with the New South Wales government to hold events in Sydney.

The promotion often has back-ups on call for big fights just in case something goes wrong — usually weigh-in issues. In Strickland’s case, Cannonier was a ‘break in case of international incident’ choice, and Sean being Sean, they had the hammer in their hand.

During a new interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Strickland’s coach Eric Nicksick revealed just how close they were to being replaced.

“I thought we were gonna get pulled, I really did,” Nicksick said. “So they went to the beach, and Sean basically incriminates himself during the fight week. He’s like, ‘Yeah this guy comes up and I punched him in the belly.’ And apparently the Australian government or whoever heard this. And it went downhill from there.”

“It got to a point where they were flying John Crouch out from MMA Lab, from Arizona to come out and corner Jared Cannonier. When I heard that I was like ‘Oh bro we are off, they gonna pull us form this card!’ These guys probably didn’t wanted Sean Strickland in this spot to begin with. It was probably pretty close to getting pulled, I don’t know what changed or what happened behind the scenes.”

Strickland did claim he had to punch a disrespectful Izzy fan in the stomach shortly after landing in Oz, but both he and UFC president Dana White later smoothed things over by claiming it was more of a joke incident than a proper assault, which is how Australian media were reporting it. Damn scumbag news outlets!

Fortunately for Sean, the fan in question didn’t press charges, so the Aussie government didn’t have a solid case to deport him outright. White promised that the UFC had people around “Tarzan” to ensure no more negative headlines, and … well. Yeah.

Strickland would go on to spar an Aussie fan at the UFC 293 open workouts, but it was all in good fun: no brutal gym beatdowns like the new middleweight champion is known for. He then criticized the Australian government for arresting a pregnant woman over her anti-COVID lockdown protests. Then he rounded out the week by calling Adesanya a whole bunch of things we can’t even repeat lest Google get the wrong idea about this site.

Adesanya fired back by bringing up Strickland’s neo-nazi past. Really great optics. At least Strickland heartily disavowed that period in his life?

It’s a good thing for him that the UFC is so unwilling to ‘cancel’ fighters. Not even two homophobic slurs dropped during the UFC 293 broadcast could push Dana White to take action. And so Strickland remained on the card, he had the performance of a lifetime, and he took the belt off Adesanya in dominant fashion.

To think a little thing like assaulting a fan almost derailed it all.