Sean Strickland’s performance within the UFC 312 title rematch against Dricus Du Plessis left everyone wanting more, including his head coach Eric Nicksick.
The middleweight title rematch headlined this past weekend’s pay-per-view event at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia. Du Plessis retained his crown by winning a transparent unanimous decision over a bloodied Strickland (29-7 MMA, 16-7 UFC), who didn’t bring much to the table in an effort to reclaim the title he once held.
“I used to be just uninspired fighting, to me,” Nicksick said on “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “It just appeared like he was sleepwalking. It was tough, man. I used to be attempting to dig him out of it through the rounds. I didn’t know if he was attempting to collect data at first, or if it was only a slow start or what was occurring, but because the rounds began to progress, I could just tell. I just didn’t feel like that he was in it the way in which a lot of the times that he’s.
“It was tough, man. It was a troublesome 25 minutes to travel all the way in which on the market. Let’s not forget, this was a title fight. I take these title fights very seriously, and I don’t know. I used to be just very disenchanted, man. I used to be disenchanted with the entire entire end result and the entire fight as a process. I just thought it was sort of flat.”
On the completion of each round within the fight, Nicksick’s sense of urgency grew louder, nevertheless it seemed his instructions fell on deaf ears. Strickland, 33, made little to no adjustments because the fight went on and consistently allowed Du Plessis to dictate the fight.
“The jab and the teep aren’t going to win the fight,” Nicksick said. “It’s like if you’ve a predictable offense and also you run this slow-paced offense in football and also you get down by 30, you don’t have the flexibility to return back and win those games.
“… You have got to take risks. You have got to make something creative occur. Just jabbing and teeping your strategy to a comeback win wasn’t there. So, it’s like dude, discover a same-side head kick, throw some knees up the center. Toss stuff different that’s not predictable to what Dricus has seen for the last nine rounds, you understand? You have got to combine it up.”
Of their first meeting at UFC 297, Strickland won three rounds on one card to force a split decision that went in Du Plessis’ favor. That fight was Strickland’s first attempt at a title defense, and was definitely more intense. Nonetheless, at UFC 312, Strickland managed to win only one round on certainly one of the three official judges’ scorecards.
“I even said to Dricus after the fight, ‘Man, I wish he would have given you a greater fight. You deserved a greater fight than that,’” Nicksick said. “He didn’t should do much. I felt like Dricus saw how Sean was fighting and minimized every risk that he needed to take, and just did his job and got out of there 25 minutes scot-free.”
The UFC was criticized for even placing Strickland in one other title fight so quickly. After losing to Du Plessis the primary time, Strickland rebounded with a split decision win against Paulo Costa. That win was adequate for the promotion to have Strickland challenge for the title again, overlooking undefeated contender Khamzat Chimaev, who ran through former champion Robert Whittaker.
Ultimately, Nicksick is disenchanted his pupil didn’t put all of it on the road in a rare opportunity to fight for the title. Whether he intends to fight his way back to the highest or not is nice, but Nicksick would really like answers on how Strickland intends to proceed from this point.
“There’s people on this sport that never even realize that potential to ever even be in the chance to fight for a championship,” Nicksick said. “That needs to 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 training staff, it’s on Sean.
“I feel he needs to guage what he desires to do on this sport. If it’s simply to make cash, then that’s great. Tell us. I would like to teach world champions, so my motivations are different. So I feel that simply to sort of show up and do this, and not likely back it up, to me was just sort of uninspiring.”
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