Sean Strickland may or may not be banned from attending UFC Freedom 250, but he turned up in the crowd at Friday night’s press conference at the Lincoln memorial.
Wild scenes ensued.
Strickland can be seen, in various fan-shot videos, landing a leg kick on one excited MMA fan, calling Donald Trump a “pedophile” and blaming the U.S. President for banning him from the venue, and eventually, fleeing the scene with fans eagerly chasing him.
Sean Strickland was off the rails after crashing the UFC White House presser
Kicked a fan’s leg and took off running 🤣 pic.twitter.com/lpVqMDi4Vn
— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) June 13, 2026
Strickland, who reclaimed his middleweight title by defeating Khamzat Chimaev just last month in a shock upset, has been a vocal critic of Trump and America’s war on Iran, and collaboration with Israel, in recent months.
Strickland acknowledged his attendance in a brief comment as social media, as well as in his own video snippet.
“I just held a baby for the first time in my life. Scariest thing I’ve ever done,” Strickland wrote after leaving the Lincoln Memorial. “Yo someone send me the leg kick and that nice snatch single lol.”
When one fan offered up the video in response, Strickland replied with “savages. Love these people.”
In a longer video clip on his Instagram Story, Strickland explained how the crowd in Washington was alerted to his presence.
“I’m sitting like way back, I’m not even in the crowd, and I have a f*cking face covering on, and this cop walks up to me and he was like ‘hey, you’ve got to take off your face covering.’ I like pulled it down, I’m like ‘I’m the middleweight champ, I’m literally just here to watch. I bought plane tickets, I can’t refund them. So I’m here.'”
The police officer in question was having none of it. “The guy was like ‘no you’ve gotta take off your hoodie.’ I was like ‘bro I cannot take off my hoodie. If I take off my hoodie, we’re all f*cked. We’re all f*cked.’ And then he’s like ‘you gotta do it.'”
“So I’m like ‘alright.’ So I take off my hoodie, he shines a flashlight in my face, bro, and the crowd just loses it,” Strickland recalled.
“I didn’t want that to happen,” he finished.
Dana White previously claimed that Strickland was not, in fact, banned from the event, and that no one had been. Strickland countered this shortly after. It does appear that the White House itself, not the UFC, may be responsible for keeping the reigning middleweight champ from the show.
