The plot thickens.
Head coach Eric Nicksick publicly criticized former UFC middleweight champion, Sean Strickland, after “Tarzan” spent five rounds “sleepwalking” against current 185-pound titleholder, Dricus Du Plessis, atop the UFC 312 pay-per-view (PPV) card earlier this month in Sydney, Australia.
Nicksick called the losing performance “uninspiring.”
The combat sports community remains divided over Nicksick’s “piss-poor wording” in the wake of UFC 312, but it sounds like his frustration goes far beyond wins and losses. A recent interview with former UFC fighter and current Xtreme Couture coach, Justin Jaynes, shed some light on the “financial dispute” between Nicksick and Strickland.
“Going into that fight, they had talked about payment and how much Eric thought he deserved to be paid and how much Sean wanted to pay and offered to pay, and I guess were was a payment dispute somewhere along the lines,” Jaynes told TenSevenMMA. “Eric sent Sean a very long text message, it’s like five paragraphs, talking about payment, wanting to talk about their agreement, and Sean ghosted him. That obviously would be very upsetting. If I’m calling someone to talk about what I think I deserve and what I am being paid, and they don’t answer, that would f*cking p*ss me off. I imagine Eric had some emotion about that.”
Strickland reportedly earned seven figures for his UFC 312 title fight.
“Then to go on, Sean saying he didn’t want to fight, he was only fighting for a paycheck; well, you gotta look at Eric’s personal life,” Jaynes said. “He has a family in Vegas, he has 100 other fighters that he works with, he has a gym that he manages. So for him to take off the time to put into Sean, putting in an eight-week fight camp, working with him for eight weeks, then going to Australia for two weeks — just for a guy that doesn’t even care about winning. He felt that not only was he shorted financially, he was taking time away from his other fighters that do wanna compete seriously and he wasn’t getting paid what he thought he deserved, and I totally understand that. I can understand why he would come out and say the things he did out of frustration, and so forth.”
In the wake of his UFC 312 loss, Strickland revealed he would “probably not” have Nicksick in his corner moving forward, but hoped to salvage their existing friendship. I’m sure these comments from Jaynes will test that commitment as matchmakers figure out how to book “Tarzan” for the second half of 2025.