Eric Nicksick has criticized the “uninspired” performance of Sean Strickland — one of his premier fighters at the Xtreme Couture MMA gym in Las Vegas.
Strickland, the former UFC middleweight champion, fought the current champ Dricus du Plessis in a rematch atop the UFC 312 pay-per-view card which took place on Saturday the 8th of February at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia. Though Strickland lost a narrow decision in the first fight, the second fight was even more convincing in du Plessis’ favor, with the South African winning pretty much every minute of every round.
Despite Nicksick’s attempts between rounds to encourage Strickland to battle back, the American never made any adjustments and saw his challenge fizzle out before it even got going. Nicksick did not hold back in his criticism when assessing the performance on The Ariel Helwani Show Tuesday.
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Eric Nicksick Critical of Sean Strickland Performance
Strickland lost a lopsided decision to Dricus du Plessis
Nicksick said Strickland was guilty of “uninspired fighting” and “sleepwalking” through a championship fight, thus surrendering the win to du Plessis.
“It was tough, man. I was trying to dig him out of it through the rounds. I didn’t know if he was trying to collect data in the beginning, or if it was just a slow start or what was going on, but as the rounds began to progress, I could just tell.”
“It was a tough 25 minutes to travel all the way out there. Let’s not forget, this was a title fight. I take these title fights very seriously, and I don’t know. I was just very disappointed, man. I was disappointed with the whole entire outcome.”
He continued by remarking that Strickland’s over-reliance of “jab and the teep” were never going to yield a positive result against a championship caliber opponent like du Plessis. “If you have a predictable offense and you run this slow-paced offense in football and you get down by 30, you don’t have the ability to come back and win those games.” Instead, Nicksick said, “you have to take risks. You have to make something creative happen.”
Nicksick added: “So, it’s like dude, find a same-side head kick, throw some knees up the middle. Throw something different that’s not predictable to what Dricus has seen for the last nine rounds, you know? You have to mix it up.”
It prompted Nicksick to tell du Plessis after the win that he regrets Strickland not being able to offer him a greater challenge.
“I even said to Dricus after the fight, ‘Man, I wish he would have given you a better fight. You deserved a better fight than that’.”
Nicksick then said Strickland himself needs to do some soul-searching.
“I think he needs to evaluate what he wants to do in this sport. 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.”
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