Sean Strickland responds to coach Nicksick’s comments

Sean Strickland has responded to the words of his coach Eric Nicksick. There are many indications that there will be a split in the team of the former UFC champion.

Sean Strickland lost to Dricus Du Plessis at the UFC 312 gala. The American failed to regain his UFC middleweight division championship belt, and his performance was met with a wave of criticism from both fans and other fighters in the world’s top MMA league.

Eric Nicksick head trainer at Xtreme Couture was a guest on Ariel Helwani‘s podcast. The trainer was responsible for Sean Strickland’s preparations and has been in Tarzan‘s corner for years. Nicksick was also with his fighter in Australia during the losing rematch battle with Dricus. Eric summed up Strickland’s performance in strong words.

– It was uninspiring. It looked like Sean was sleepwalking, like he was asleep in this fight. It was tough, I tried to get more out of him in the following rounds. I just didn’t know if he had a poor start and was slow to get going, or if he wanted to read Dricus’ actions more. Unfortunately, as time went on, I noticed that he wasn’t giving it his all, wasn’t fighting like he always did.

– I treat championship fights with the utmost seriousness, I approach it motivated. This result is a big disappointment to me because it looked weak. Sean was not creative, he brought out predictable actions. You don’t win a duel without taking risks. Just being in a championship fight should be enough motivation to work hard. For me, it was a bad performance and the responsibility for it rests on the shoulders of all of us, on me as a coach, but also on Sean.

Eric Nicksick ultimately stated that if Sean Strickland wants to fight solely for money then he should tell him. After all, the coach is focused on sports results and wants to work with fighters who have sports ambitions and goals.

– I think he needs to do an evaluation of what he wants to get out of the sport. If he just wants to make money, cool great. On the other hand, let him tell me about it. I want to be the trainer of world champions, so in that case our motivation is quite different. Really all this talk and statements before the fight, and then this poor performance. He didn’t back up his words with actions, it’s disappointing.

Sean Strickland posted a video in which he responded to his coach’s words. It appears that there has been a split in the former UFC champion’s team.

– I like Eric, he is my colleague and will remain so. Will he be in my corner in the next fight? Most likely not. We have a lot of great guys in Xtreme Couture, for example, there is Nate Pettit, there is Ray Sefo, there are a lot of brutes that I would love to have in my corner. This whole camp, these preparations have been difficult. We all have excuses why we didn’t win, and others find them when we win or when they say we shouldn’t have won. We all have k**wa excuses, only they don’t mean anything.

– Everything bad has overlapped. That’s how it is, that a great opportunity sometimes comes at the worst time. I had a broken bone in my hand, I had a staph infection, there was a problem with getting a visa to Australia for a long time. Everything was sitting in the back of my head, I had to be careful during sparring and training.