Sean Strickland’s coach gets brutally honest following lopsided UFC 312 title fight: “I wanna coach world champions”
Sean Strickland’s coach Eric Nicksick has sounded off on his loss at UFC 312 over the weekend.
‘Tarzan’ returned to the octagon in the main event of the UFC’s pay-per-view offering from Australia on Saturday. There, Sean Strickland again met middleweight champion, Dricus du Plessis. ‘Stillknocks’ famously won the gold from the boxing-heavy American last year, by a controversial split decision.
However, their second meeting at UFC 312 was anything but controversial. Du Plessis dominated Sean Strickland across five rounds on Saturday, bloodying the former champion badly in round four. While ‘Tarzan’ showed toughness going the distance with a broken nose, he didn’t get much praise. Instead, many, many high-profile fighters, analysts, and coaches have blasted his performance.
Now, Sean Strickland is getting criticism from his own head coach, Eric Nicksick. The head of Xtreme Couture has guided the likes of Francis Ngannou and Aljamain Sterling to UFC gold in the past and coached ‘Tarzan’ to a title win over Israel Adesanya in 2023. However, Nicksick isn’t pleased with Strickland’s latest performance against Dricus du Plessis.
“I think [Sean Strickland] needs to evaluate what he wants to do in the sport. If it’s just to make money, then that’s great. Let us know.
I wanna coach world champions. My motivations are different. Just to kind of show up and do that and not really back it up, to me, was just… pic.twitter.com/wVl4JFnORK
— Ariel Helwani (@arielhelwani) February 11, 2025
Sean Strickland’s coach Eric Nicksick sounds off on lopsided UFC title defeat
Appearing on The Ariel Helwani Show earlier today, Eric Nicksick offered some criticism of Sean Strickland’s performance. The longtime coach admitted that he was incredibly disappointed with the way the former champion fought after his talk leading into the event. While Nicksick still has respect for ‘Tarzan’, he believes he has a lot to figure out on his end.
“It was just uninspired fighting to me.” Eric Nicksick stated on The Ariel Helwani Show earlier today, discussing Sean Strickland’s performance. “It just seemed like he was sleepwalking, it was tough man… So it was tough. It was a tough 25 minutes, to travel all the way out there, and let’s not forget this was a title fight. I take these title fights very seriously. I don’t know, I was just disappointed, I was disappointed with the whole entire outcome. The whole fight as a process, I just thought it was kind of flat.”
He continued, “… I do [agree with some of the criticism]. I do, we have to be real. It was just a very underwhelming performance in an opportunity to fight for a title… We didn’t perform. That’s all on all of us. At the same time, I think he needs to evaluate what he wants to do in this sport. If it’s to make money, that’s great, let us know. I want to coach world champions. So, my motivations are different. I think that, just to kind of show up and do that and not really back it up, to me, was just uninspiring.”
What do you make of these comments from Eric Nicksick? Who do you want to see Sean Strickland face in his next UFC appearance?
This article appeared first on BJPENN.COM
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