Sean Strickland was irked by coach Eric Nicksick’s public criticism of his performance in this past Saturday’s UFC 312 title-fight rematch with Dricus Du Plessis.
Nicksick, the head coach at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, has been the chief cornerman to Strickland (29-7 MMA, 16-7 UFC) during his rise up to the middleweight division and into his championship victory over Israel Adesanya at UFC 293 in September 2023. He helped guide Strickland to the top again for a rematch with Du Plessis (23-2 MMA, 9-0 UFC), but it did not unfold as he intended.
After Strickland, who endured through a broken nose for the latter half of the fight, turned in a fairly lackluster performance over five rounds in a unanimous decision loss, his coach did not hold back on his feelings when speaking to “The Ariel Helwani Show.”
“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, 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.”
The comments from Nicksick were enough for Strickland to issue a public response on social media. The former UFC champ detailed the many issues he experienced leading up to stepping in the octagon at UFC 312, but briefly spoke on the fallout of what his coach had to say.
Strickland indicated a personal relationship between them will continue on a friendship level, but as far as their professional relationship, it seems that the two sides may splinter for the time being.
“I like Eric,” Strickland said. “He’s a friend of mine. He’s going to continue to be a friend of mine. Will he probably be in my corner? Probably not. We have some many great guys at Xtreme. … We have so many savages that can corner me. But that entire fight camp was just a struggle. It was a f*cking struggle, and we all have excuses as to why we didn’t win or why we won or we shouldn’t have won. We all f*cking have excuses, and they don’t f*cking matter.”
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