“What I’ve learned over the years is you should probably give people a little grace here and there. I can’t bat a thousand, and I made a mistake; I made a calculated error on that part. But what I was trying to do, in a roundabout way, was to challenge my fighter to perform better the next time out.” —Eric Nicksick
Former UFC middleweight champion, Sean Strickland, laid an egg against reigning 185-pound titleholder, Dricus Du Plessis, when they ran it back atop the UFC 312 pay-per-view (PPV) card earlier this month in Sydney, Australia.
Can’t blame this one on “optics.”
“Tarzan” was buried under a landslide of criticism in the wake of his ho-hum performance but seemed particularly unhappy with the post-fight feedback from his longtime coach, Eric Nicksick, who (publicly) called the effort “uninspiring.”
“I made a miscalculation in that moment in ever accepting to go on [Ariel Helwani’s] show,” Nicksick said on Verse Us. “Number two, my wording was piss-poor. What I said was accurate: the fight was uninspiring. We all know Sean. That is not how Sean fights. What I said was accurate. Am I to shoulder some of that blame? One hundred percent. As a staff, it’s on us. I’ve always said that. But his output, his body language, his demeanor, it did not feel like Sean. And if anybody thinks I should have lied to cover, that’s a ‘Yes Man,’ and I won’t be that. So if anybody is upset that I was a little too harsh on Sean f*cking Strickland, what are we doing here?”
Strickland is great at dishing it out … not so great at taking it.
“So, did I f*ck up? Did I go and call him out or say anything that no one else was saying? I was probably the best on him compared to Din Thomas, other people,” Nicksick continued. “These guys were going after him. ‘Oh, you’re piling on!’ No, I’m being open and honest to the constructive criticism that we all should take on, myself included. Since he beat Izzy, I’ve seen a change. So I said what I said, hoping to get him back. So if that makes me a sh*tty person or a bad coach or whatever, I don’t know. But I don’t regret what I said. I regret the timing of it and the wording of it.”
The loss to Du Plessis marked Strickland’s second defeat over his last six fights, with the other coming against “Stillknocks” at UFC 297. No word yet on when or where the 33 year-old “Tarzan” will make his Octagon return, but second half of 2025 seems likely.
With or without Nicksick.