The Keith Lee and Sean Strickland controversy explained

There’s a new feud that UFC fans will be well aware of over recent weeks and it’s between MMA fighter Sean Strickland and UFC star turned TIkToker Keith Lee.

Lee has had one of the most surprising career progressions over recent times, going from a fighter under the name Keith ‘Killa’ Lee to a viral food critic appraising food on TikTok.

He's been in the limelight again recently after Strickland shared a story about an altercation he had with Lee in the gym.

When the pair met, Stickland claimed that Lee tried to debate him on race relations. He also stated that Lee had called him a racist.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Recounting the incident, Strickland told MMA Mania: “He comes up to me and tried to talk to me about race, he tried to have this racial systematic oppression s***…I don’t disagree, but I’m not trying to have this debate in the gym, I’m trying to spar.”

He went on to say: “So he comes up to me and starts accusing me of being f***ing racist and I’m like what are we f***ing doing here dude like if I was racist, I’m the most honest motherf***er there.”

The MMA fighter then said that Lee said he ‘doesn’t like white people’ after he began outlandish comments.

“Anytime you’re talking to somebody racist, and I know this because I used to be a little racist, anytime you’re talking to somebody racist and you want to p*** them off, you’ve just got to talk about… the sex, the race of whatever they are.”

He added: “So I’m like yo Lee, I’m not racist, I f*** more Black women than you have bro how am I a racist and I said that just to p*** him off. I said that just to make him mad and I’m like ‘bro just relax, I know you got a little white woman at home, chill the f*** out’ and I’m just kind of poking him but I’m doing it funny and he goes ‘nah f*** that, I don’t like white people!’

Lee responded by posting a TikTok video of himself denying the accusations.

“I received a week straight of false allegations, negative comments, and negative backlash for something that I didn’t do,” he said in the clip.

“Yes, me and Sean had a conversation. No, the conversation didn’t go how he depicted it. Sean Strickland is an MMA fighter known for saying divisive things. I walked up to him and two people who I consider friends already having a conversation after practice. I joined the conversation and the conversation happened to already be on race.

“Never at any point did I say I didn’t like anybody, I simply disagreed with what he said and instead of fighting ignorance with ignorance, I said no, I’m happily married with children and I’m very proud of the family that God has allowed me to build and I immediately disagreed with all the ignorant and distasteful comments that he made and I was no longer interested in entertaining the conversation.

“I don’t have any bad feelings or wish anything ill against Sean Strickland, I just want this cleared up.”

Strickland has made a string of controversial comments in the past, recently making misogynistic remarks at a press conference where he said “we need to take women out of the workforce” and “put them back in the kitchen”.

“We let women vote, no offence. Think about America prior to women voting,” he said during a bizarre press conference last month.

“They tried to ban alcohol, I don't even drink but I'm not trying to ban alcohol. So, what you did, man, you let these women come into the workforce, now we make less money, you got kids raising themselves on TikTok, we need to go back to like 1942, maybe 1958 after we f****d up the Germans.”

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.