“Bleed For Love”: Dricus Du Plessis Shares Valentine’s Day Message for Sean Strickland Ahead of UFC 312

“The things we do for love!“. An iconic line delivered by Ser Jamie Lannister after he threw a 10-year-old boy off a tower in the very first episode of ‘Game of Thrones’. Dricus du Plessis probably won’t try to harm a child but he’s more than happy to let Sean Strickland breathe his last in the octagon at UFC 312. But is Strickland willing to die for the title?

Du Plessis and Strickland have a rivalry that makes people wonder if one of them bullied the other as a kid. But no, the pair have only fought once previously; at UFC 297. But they hate each other’s guts. From the looks of it, it’s not even that personal for DDP. Just a couple of days ago, he had admitted to being willing to kill “another man in front of his family” as a self-proclaimed ‘modern-day gladiator’.

Despite this abject apathy, DDP was willing to pen down a Valentine’s Day message for his would-be opponent on the 9th of February. Summoning every ounce of love in his cold wasteland of a heart, Du Plessis wrote,

“Dear Sean, are you willing to bleed for love? Me neither. But I am willing to kill you for that belt. Love DDP”

And how did Strickland respond?

One would imagine Strickland wouldn’t care about it at all. But they would be wrong to do so. Strickland did what Stephen Hawking thought was impossible. Hawking theorized that while traveling ahead in time is something everything in creation did, the universe would prevent people from traveling back in time.

However, Strickland went back in time to the early 2000s for a homophobic joke. Calling the gesture “gay”, Strickland claimed that he didn’t expect anything else from DDP.

Well, Strickland’s loss is somebody else’s gain. Probably! We can’t say for sure. Evidently, there is no love lost between these two fighters. However, the champion seems to be growing on fans; even Strickland fans.

DDP making news friends fans along the way

Du Plessis has an uncanny knack for being funny both inside and outside the octagon. This is the same person, who headbutted Strickland’s butt during their first fight. His wild arm swings stopped Israel Adesanya from mounting an offense. And Robert Whittaker thought the South African was too slow to hit him and still somehow lost the fight.

Now, that’s inside the octagon. Outside, Du Plessis had both Adesanya and Strickland get in touch with their feels during their pre-fight pressers. Comments, criticisms, and accusations just seem to bounce off of his back. He finds a weird situation and makes the best out of it by turning it on his opponents; exactly like he did with the V-day card for Strickland.

And because of that fans seem to be siding with Du Plessis with each passing day, even ones that didn’t like him before, like this gentleman, who said, “DDP is getting more and more likable by the week“.

Another joked that while the fight is a few days away, DDP had won this round by “psychological trauma“.

This guy, who just realized that the champion was just chaotic in real life as well, claimed, “DDP Writes like he fights“. Another simply praised Du Plessis for his mind games and said, “Nobody is currently better than Dricus at getting under people’s skin. He made his last 2 opponents cry before the fight. He’s an elite sh*t talker and a cool guy“.

Strickland, on the other hand, seems to be taking an ‘L’ for his attitude towards a little harmless joke. This man asked for Strickland to chill out and said, “Sean is bordering on insecure atp. Just a little fun man“. The replies to this comment, however, acknowledged that Strickland was so far beyond the line that the line looked like a dot to him. A few Trump jokes were also thrown around.

Others like his man, joked about how Strickland was going to rain down vengeance upon Du Plessis and said, “Careful Dricus or ‘bad man’ Sean will take you to one hell of a decision“.

Well, Strickland doesn’t need to listen to anyone. He is a former world champion, so his credentials speak for himself. This is exactly why he plans on having UFC light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira in his corner at UFC 312.

However, if you ask DDP, he will tell you that Pereira speaks Portuguese and Strickland doesn’t even understand his own American coach, so there will be a lot of one-sided conversations there.

So he’s not listening to anyone anyway!