The UFC has said they are going to increase security for UFC 328 in Newark on May 9th, but are they going to increase it enough?
That’s a very serious question given the hot-headed temperament of both Khamzat Chimaev and Sean Strickland. And if a brawl breaking out during fight week wasn’t a big enough concern, now Strickland is promising he’ll bring a gun to a fist fight.
“He’s already talking about, if you guys run into each other, he’ll have his friends with him and you won’t have any,” The Mac
Life’s Oscar Willis reminded Strickland during a new interview.
“All I’m gonna do, I’ll pull my gun out of my shoe,” Strickland replied. “If [Chimaev] were to come up to me like a man and say, ‘You know what, Sean? You said some things about my dad [Ramzan] Kadyrov.’ And I’m like, well you know what dude? You wh–ed yourself out, not me. ‘I wanna settle this.’ I would say ‘Let’s settle this like men.”
“But if you come up to me with three f–king Chechens that don’t speak English, I’m gonna pull my gun and I’m gonna shoot each and every one of you.”
Sean Strickland has always pushed the UFC’s ‘free speech’ policy to the limit, and recently had his presser mic turned off following his big UFC Houston win when he started calling Khamzat Chimaev a ‘goat f–ker,’ an insult Strickland has used so frequently in the build up to UFC 328 that it’s impossible to write an honest article about their feud without mentioning it.
And now he’s threatening to shoot his opponent? This has gotten way out of hand.
The UFC will do its best to avoid a mass shooting perpetrated by one of the headliners of its big Newark card by keeping the fighters at separate hotels and limiting the number of promotional interactions before May 9th. But with both men spoiling for a fight before the fight, can the promotion keep this pot from boiling over?
