Sean Strickland was 'sleepwalking' in UFC 312 defeat, says coach
By Simon Head
Sean Strickland's coach has revealed his frustration at the middleweight contender's below-par performance at UFC 312.
Strickland lost a lopsided unanimous decision to reigning middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis in a fight that saw him struggle to get a foothold in the contest as Du Plessis bossed the exchanges throughout the five-round title clash in Sydney, Australia.
But while Du Plessis earned deserved praise for his display, Strickland's showing drew the opposite, as he was criticized for his inability to up his intensity when he needed to during the middle rounds.
“It was just uninspired fighting, to me,” Nicksick admitted.
RELATED: UFC analyst rips Sean Strickland’s UFC 312 performance: ‘He’s not who he says he is’
“It just seemed like he was sleepwalking, you know? 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 that I just didn’t feel like that he was in it the way most of the times that he is.
“So yeah, it was tough, man. It was a tough 25 minutes to travel all the way out there. Let’s not forget, this was a title fight, and I take these title fights very seriously. I was just very disappointed, man. I was disappointed with the whole entire outcome and the whole fight as a process. I just thought it was kind of flat.”
And, in a remarkably honest assessment of his own fighter, he said that Strickland had mentally shut down during the course of the fight, as he failed to put into action anything the corner were telling him between rounds.
“He’s kind of checked out. That’s kind of what I’m thinking,” he said.
“It’s like, you’re grasping at straws at that point. You’re just trying to get him to do something. And like, you know, like my dad always used to say in football, you’ve got to get something to get the band playing, right? Get the crowd in, get motivated, get the momentum on your side again, you know?
“So I’m asking for anything. You know, the jab and the teep aren’t going to win the fight. You know, it’s like, if you have a predictable offense, and you run this slow pace offense in football, and you get down by 30, you don’t have the ability to come back and win those games, right? You just don’t have the ability to come back and win those types of games.
“So you have to take risks. You have to make something creative happen, and just jabbing and keeping your way to a comeback when it wasn’t there. So it’s like, dude, find the same side head-kick. Throw some knees up the middle. So throw something different that’s not predictable to what Dricus has seen for the last nine rounds, you know? So we have to mix it up.”
Now Nicksick said he wants Strickland to carefully decide how he wants to approach the next chapter of his fighting career, because he, as a coach, wants to make sure he's committing his time and energy into fighters who are all-in on becoming the best they can be.
“We have to be real. It was just a very underwhelming performance and an opportunity to fight for the title,” Nicksick explained.
“There’s people in this sport that never even realize that potential to ever even be in the opportunity to fight for a championship. That should be enough to get you motivated to get you off the couch. To me, we didn’t perform. It’s on all of us, it’s on me as a coaching staff, it’s on Sean.
“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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