Michael Bisping reacts to Eric Nicksick’s preferred choice for Sean Strickland’s first title defense: “That might be the easiest fight”

Michael Bisping is reacting to Eric Nicksick’s preferred choice for Sean Strickland’s first title defense.

Following Sean Strickland’s (28-5 MMA) impressive victory over Israel Adesanya (24-3 MMA) last weekend at UFC 293, the newly crowned middleweight champion will be looking to search out his next opponent.

Rumblings of a rematch with Adesanya are in the news as are other possible candidates such as Jared Cannonier (17-6 MMA), Dricus Du Plessis (20-2 MMA) or perhaps the winner of the upcoming Paulo Costa (14-2 MMA) vs Khamzat Chimaev (12-0 MMA) battle which takes place this coming October at UFC 294.

During a video posted to his YouTube channel, former middleweight champion Michael Bisping is weighing in on who Strickland should fight next saying:

“Sean Strickland’s coach, he wants the next person to be Jared Cannonier. He says ‘look, listen, UFC obviously whatever they’re going to do, they’re going to do but I said Jared Cannonier for a number of reasons. Number one, he did beat us, now of course it was a split decision but on that record we got beat and I think there were things that we didn’t do correctly in that fight that caused us to lose.'”

Eric Nicksick, Strickland’s coach, did indeed say he’d like to see Jared Cannonier get the nod. ‘The Killa Gorilla’ fought and defeated Strickland back in December of 2022 by split decision.

Michael Bisping concluded (h/t MMANews):

“Don’t take this the wrong way if you hear this Mr. Nicksick, it seems like they’re trying to pick him because, I don’t know, it was a split decision, a lot of people thought Sean Strickland won that fight right and Khamzat Chimaev is an absolute monster. Dricus Du Plessis is an absolute monster and you never know right, that might be the easiest fight and that sounds insulting to Jared Cannonier, I’m not being insulting. What I’m saying is, they know they had a really close fight.” 

Who would you like to see Sean Strickland get in the Octagon with next?

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