UFC fighter Sean Strickland disappointed fans with a lacklustre performance at the UFC 312. However, fans were not the only one disappointed as his head coach Eric Nicksick had some opinions on his performance too.
Sean Strickland faced middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 312 and lost after suffering a bloody nose. The unanimous decision loss had a lot of fans frustrated as they believed the fighter could have done much better. Strickland’s head coach Eric Nicksick had a sit down with Ariel Helwani and discussed his frustration with Strickland’s performance.
“It was uninspired fighting to me. It just seemed like he was sleepwalking,” Nicksick said Tuesday on “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “And it was tough, man. I was just trying to try to dig him out of it through the rounds. I didn’t know if he was trying to collect data in the beginning or if it was just a slow start or what was going on. But as the rounds began to progress, I can tell that just didn’t feel like he was in it the way most of the times that he is. So yeah, it was tough, man. It was a tough 25 minutes to travel all the way out there.
“Let’s not forget, this is a title fight — and I take these title fights very seriously. I was just disappointed, man. It was disappointing, the whole entire outcome, the whole fight as a process. I just thought it was just kind of flat.”
“I really didn’t [expect it],” he said. “Sydney’s good vibes, good juju. Everything that went on out there last time with Israel, I thought it was the place to be. I was very happy about that situation, getting back out there to fight. Then, getting the rematch with Dricus, I think there was things that we worked on all camp that were better than the last time around. We had a feel of what Dricus was going to implement.
“I was very excited for it, man. So just for that type of performance, it was very underwhelming.”
Although it was revealed that Strickland was battling a staph infestation prior to his fight, Nicksick believes this had nothing to do with his poor performance. The coach said that the team began to feel bothered in the early round but he believed it could be worked through. Sadly, Strickland couldn’t turn the tide around and won only a single round on the scorecard.
“He’s kind of checked out,” Nicksick said when asked for his mid-fight thoughts. “That’s kind of what I’m thinking, it’s like you’re grasping at straws at that point. You’re trying to get him to do something. My dad used to always say in football, you got to get something to get the band playing, right? Get the crowd and get motivated, get the momentum on your side again. So I’m asking for anything. The jab and the teep aren’t going to win the fight. It’s like if you have a predictable offense and you run this slow-paced offense in football and you get down by 30, you don’t have the ability to come back and win those games, right? You just don’t have the ability to come back and win those types of games.
“You have to take risks. And, you have to make something creative happen, and just jabbing and tapping your way to a comeback win wasn’t there. So it’s like, dude, find the same side head kick, throw some knees up the middle. Throw something different that’s not predictable to what Dricus has seen for the last nine rounds. We have to mix it up.
“We don’t want to be giving rounds away, especially after the first [fight], right? It was such a close fight that giving round one away was scary enough for me. I don’t want to give any rounds away, let alone one and two. We have to come back, and really, we don’t have that one-hitter-quitter comeback mentality with Sean. That, to me, was just kind of like, ‘Well, we’re going to have to try to start doing something different.'”
Nicksick said he was disappointed with Strickland for not going according to their game plan of disrupting du Plessis’s combination. He plans on having a talk with Strickland on what to do better in the future. The former fighter-turned-coach still has utmost respect for Strickland and sees the fighter as a good grappler and a worthy opponent.
“I would have to sit down with Sean and talk to him about, right? Where can my services be of help for you?” Nicksick said.
“I think, as a coach, you get credit for things you don’t do essentially as much, or you get the blame for things that you might not do as well. So you kind of have to be right there in the middle. But in situations like this, where your motivations might change [as a fighter] — and if that’s the case, if his motivations have changed to something different, where it’s like, ‘Hey, I prefer to fight for money or a paycheck, and it’s not to be the best or be a world champion’ — then yeah, I think as a coach and fighter, we should sit down and have that conversation.
“I love him, man. He’s a great teammate, he’s a great guy. You guys heard me say that time and time again. But if your fights aren’t to be the best in the world and they’re for money, then that’s not really what I’m looking for. I want to compete against the best. I want to win world titles. That’s my main focus and goal.”
