Will Sean Strickland stay at Xtreme Couture after saying he would no longer have head coach Eric Nicksick cornering him? ‘DC’ has his doubts.
Daniel Cormier believes there could be a rocky road ahead for Sean Strickland after his coach Eric Nicksick ripped into him publicly on a podcast for his lackluster UFC 312 performance.
Strickland took on Dricus Du Plessis for the UFC middleweight title in Sydney, Australia last week. And while Du Plessis came in with a gameplan tailor-made to beat the Strickland he faced back at UFC 297, Strickland came in fighting the exact same fight he always does … and lost because of it.
Nicksick went on The Ariel Helwani MMA show and basically accused Strickland of sleepwalking through the fight. He questioned Strickland’s commitment to winning and desire to be champion. He seemed to suggest his days of closely coaching Sean might be over. Pretty brutal words, especially on such a major platform. But “DC” largely sided with the Xtreme Couture head coach.
“When your fighter gets beat in that way, any great coach will have words to say about said fighter, and the vast majority of those words will be harsh,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “So I don’t blame coach Nicksick for what he said … If you’re not gonna listen to that guy, a guy who has coached multiple world champions, Aljamain Sterling, Francis Ngannou, and so many others, don’t bring him there.”
“Sean was kinda walking away from Coach Nicksick, so you could tell that there was a little bit of an issue, and we made mention of it on the broadcast,” Cormier continued. “He just didn’t seem to accept the instruction as openly as you would think he should. So I don’t blame coach. I think any great coach needs to judge their athletes fairly, but very harsh whenever they don’t compete to the ability that you expect them to. Because if you don’t, who’s going to? Especially in a world where most people are just saying yes.”
Since Nicksick’s comments got out, Strickland replied and suggested Nicksick wouldn’t be cornering him moving forward. Cormier questioned whether that was a call “Tarzan” was in a position to make and still stay at Xtreme Couture.
Eric Nicksick Lays Into Sean Strickland After The Second Round . UFC 312 pic.twitter.com/JemFXmnaT8
— CornerKaos (@CornerKaos) February 9, 2025
“Do you believe that when we were all fighting at the top of the sport, that we could pick and choose and go, ‘We don’t want Javier Mendez in our corner?’ He was the head coach of the gym. I don’t know that it works like that.”
“If that’s what the idea is supposed to be, I think we’re gonna be seeing more changes coming out of Xtreme Couture,” Cormier said. “And when you have more changes, it’s not the coach, guys. It’s not the coach. So I think Sean needs to be very careful in this sense. And Eric’s a great guy, so it might actually be okay. Eric might be a guy that says, ‘Okay Sean, you can work with other people.’ But I will tell you, in most instances, you don’t get to just X out the head coach and go about your business freely. It just doesn’t work like that.”
“He’s the head coach for a reason. Eric’s been at this gym for a really long time. They’re gonna have some hard conversations coming out of that gym.”