Gilbert Burns was on high alert at UFC 296, sitting next to Sean Strickland and Dorikas du Plessis.
The viral clip of Strickland and du Plessis brawling in the crowd at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas has been widely seen. It shows Strickland asking the crowd, including Burns’ family, to move aside so he can confront his opponent in the upcoming UFC 297 main event.
Burns’ wife, Bruna, reassured the mixed martial arts organization that the family was safe after the incident. On a podcast, Gilbert revealed that Strickland had hinted at the possibility of something happening.
Strickland had seemingly been preparing for a confrontation, as Burns recounted, “When Sean came in, he kind of looked at the guy and I think he was already like, ‘Hey, son of a bitch.’ Did you bring his wife and children?” Of course.’ He said, ‘Oh, this son of a bitch is right there.’ He might do something with this guy. That was before the game. When he came in, there was already something in his head that said, ‘If I do something, I’ll give you a heads up.’ When things started to go down, this guy looked at me and said, ‘Come on.’
The chaotic scene was captured on numerous cell phone cameras and spread widely on social media, leading the UFC to release footage of the brawl. Strickland will defend his UFC middleweight title against Du Plessis in the main event of UFC 297 on January 20th in Toronto.
The upcoming in-cage clash at UFC 297 was expected to be more eventful than the melee at UFC 296, according to Burns.
“He told his son and wife to move, so he pushed the seat down where he stepped,” Burns recounted. “The sheets fell off. They bumped into each other a little bit. People weren’t looking at that side of the camera. It was right there, so I looked. It was like a little bit of back and forth, and I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t pretty either. And my husband. [White] After a fight: ‘What happened?’ Was anyone hurt? is there something you need? No, nothing happened to anyone.”
