Coach slams Strickland's 'underwhelming' UFC 312 performance
Sean Strickland's coach believes the former UFC middleweight champion needs to look himself in the mirror after an "underwhelming" performance against Dricus Du Plessis.
Strickland suffered a unanimous decision loss in a rematch with 185-pound champion Du Plessis at UFC 312 this past weekend in Sydney, Australia.
Eric Nicksick, the head coach at Las Vegas' Xtreme Couture, was critical of Strickland's showing, calling it "uninspired fighting."
"It just seemed like he was sleepwalking," Nicksick told "The Ariel Helwani Show" on Tuesday. "It was tough, man. I was just 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 tell it just didn't feel like he was in it the way most of the times that he is."
Nicksick added: "It was a tough 25 minutes. To travel all the way out there. And let's not forget, this is a title fight. I take these title fights very seriously. I don't know. I was just disappointed, man. I was disappointed with the whole, entire outcome, the whole fight as a process. Just thought it was just kind of flat."
Du Plessis outclassed Strickland in the rematch after winning a split decision in their first fight at UFC 297 in January 2024. He shut out Strickland on two judges' scorecards and won four of five rounds on the third judge's scorecard. Du Plessis outlanded the challenger 147-128 in significant strikes in the rematch after Strickland had a considerable edge - 173-137 - in the first meeting.
Several people, including UFC broadcaster Din Thomas and former middleweight champion Luke Rockhold, have criticized Strickland since the fight. And Nicksick believes the criticism is warranted.
"We have to be real: It just was a very underwhelming performance in an opportunity to fight for the title," Nicksick said. "There's people in this sport that never even realize that potential to ever even be in an opportunity to fight for a championship. That should be enough to get you motivated, to get you off the couch. It just, to me, was - we didn't perform.
"It's on all of us. It's on me as a coaching staff, it's on Sean."
Nicksick said the 33-year-old former champion, who's lost two of his last three fights and is outside the title picture, needs to consider his goals moving forward.
"I think he needs to evaluate what he wants to do in this sport," Nicksick said. "If it's just to make money, then that's great - let us know. I want to coach world champions. My motivations are different. I think that just to kind of show up and do that and not really back it up, just, to me, was kind of uninspiring."