Sean Strickland’s coach has given his honest assessment of his fighter’s performance after the former UFC middleweight champion was defeated by Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 312 in Sydney, Australia.
Eric Nickick is head coach at Las Vegas gym Xtreme Couture, and has been the chief cornerman for Strickland through his recent fighting career. And, after watching Strickland fall to a disappointing decision defeat to Du Plessis in their title fight in Sydney, Nicksick appeared on The Ariel Helwani show and said that the performance turned in by his fighter was underwhelming, to say the least.
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“It was just uninspired fighting, to me,” Nicksick admitted.
“It just seemed like he was sleepwalking, you know? It was tough, man. I was trying 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 could just tell that I just didn’t feel like that 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 was a title fight, and I take these title fights very seriously. I was just very disappointed, man. I was disappointed with the whole entire outcome and the whole fight as a process. I just thought it was kind of flat.”
Strickland and Du Plessis had already fought for 25 minutes in their first meeting back at UFC 297. And, after Strickland fell behind early in the rematch, Nicksick implored his fighter to mix things up and use some variation in his attacks. But Strickland seemed to be stuck in a loop as he jabbed and teeped his way through rounds that saw him consistently outworked by the South African world champion.
After trying to impart his advice and direction from the corner, to see Strickland stuck in second gear was frustrating for Nicksick to see as a coach, as he explained his emotions as he watched the fight play out in front of him.
“He’s kind of checked out. That’s kind of what I’m thinking,” he said.
“It’s like, you’re grasping at straws at that point. You’re just trying to get him to do something. And like, you know, like my dad always used to say in football, you’ve got to get something to get the band playing, right? Get the crowd in, get motivated, get the momentum on your side again, you know?
“So I’m asking for anything. You know, the jab and the teep aren’t going to win the fight. You know, it’s like, if you have a predictable offense, and you run this slow pace 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.
“So you have to take risks. You have to make something creative happen, and just jabbing and keeping your way to a comeback when it wasn’t there. So it’s like, dude, find the same side head-kick. Throw some knees up the middle. So throw something different that’s not predictable to what Dricus has seen for the last nine rounds, you know? So we have to mix it up.”
But in Sydney, Strickland didn’t mix it up. He stayed in his steady, predictable pattern of jabbing and teeping, and rarely broke out of it as his performance petered out. It resulted in Du Plessis winning comprehensively on the scorecards, with two judges scoring it a 50-45 shutout, while the third judge gave Strickland just one round.
It meant that Du Plessis claimed a relatively straightforward victory, and Nicksick revealed that he actually apologized to the champion after the bout for not testing him more during the contest.
“I even said to Dricus after the fight, ‘Man, I wish he would have given you a better fight. You deserved a better fight than that,'” he said.
“He didn’t have to do much. I felt like Dricus saw how Sean was fighting and minimized every risk that he had to take, and just did his job and got out of there 25 minutes scot-free.”
After every significant defeat in a fighter’s career, the fighter needs to take time to assess what happened, to take stock and decide how to move forward. That’s exactly what Nicksick wants Strickland to do next, with the coach stating that he wants the former champion to make a clear decision on what his motivations are at this stage in his career.
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“We have to be real. It was just a very underwhelming performance and an opportunity to fight for the title,” Nicksick explained.
“There’s people in this sport that never even realize that potential to ever even be in the opportunity to fight for a championship. That should be enough to get you motivated to get you off the couch. To me, we didn’t perform. It’s on all of us, it’s on me as a coaching staff, it’s on Sean.
“I think he needs to evaluate what he wants to do in this sport. If it’s just to make money, then that’s great. Let us know. I want to coach world champions, so my motivations are different. So I think that just to kind of show up and do that, and not really back it up, to me was just kind of uninspiring.”
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