It’s safe to say that Sean Strickland did not receive new fans after his performance at UFC 312. He went into the fight with everything; a good team, the support of the Australian crowd, and a big thrash talk game that promised fireworks. “To the death, Dutchman!”, were his exact words. Instead, what we got was a super defensive performance by ‘Tarzan’, where he couldn’t outstrike Dricus Du Plessis, and ended up losing favor with even his Xtreme Couture head coach Erik Nicksick, who openly voiced his frustrations with Strickland to Ariel Helwani after the bout concluded.
Many members of the MMA community voiced their frustrations at Strickland’s big talk and no-show at UFC 312. Din Thomas claimed that ‘Tarzan is “not who he claims he is”, reflecting his sentiments that the former champion doesn’t back up his words. Luke Rockhold, too, didn’t hold back in his criticism of California native, calling Strickland “insecure”. For his part, Sean Strickland, despite claiming to still be friends with Erik Nicksick, stated that he would no longer be training under him. However, Daniel Cormier, who was a commentator at UFC 312, backed Nicksick up in the separation between coach and student.
DC said that Strickland’s decision to fire his head coach wasn’t a good idea and that the frustration from coach Nicksick was fair. He said, “They’re gonna have some hard conversations coming out of this gym. Ultimately the fault is on Sean Strickland because he is the one that did not operate on the level that his coaches expected him to. That’s it and that’s why the frustration was there from coach Nicksick.”
“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 added before continuing, “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.”
Nicksick was indeed a little apprehensive about Strickland listening to his instructions and even voiced his concerns before UFC 312. He even told Mike Heck that Francis Ngannou always stuck to the gameplan but with Strickland, he was not that confident. “Like with Sean like, I don’t know like. Half the time, is he even paying attention? So, I just go because I have the best seat in the house, you know?”, Nicksick told Heck. So Strickland’s loss at UFC 312 was like the last straw for Nicksick.
While Cormier seems to be supporting Nicksick’s stance now, he earlier expressed his frustrations with Nicksick for expecting too much out of someone like Sean Strickland. This is when veteran MMA referee ‘Big’ John McCarthy stepped in.
John McCarthy disagreed with DC in one stance
Before voicing his support for Erik Nicksick, Daniel Cormier had spoken about how it wasn’t fair for the Xtreme Couture coach to have such high expectations from Sean Strickland. He stated that not every combatant can break through the cream of excellence like Khabib Nurmagomedov did and criticized Nicksick for demoralizing his teammate. “Not everyone is going to be a world champ. You don’t get to coach all world champs,” DC said on his YouTube channel.
This is where veteran referee John McCarthy disagreed with DC’s perspective and said that the head coach from Xtreme Couture was not dismissing Strickland’s potential but was rather fed up with the latter’s lack of zeal. “I think DC’s wrong. When Eric sits there and says, ‘Hey, if you wanna be that fighter that is fighting for money, I understand that and that’s okay. But I wanna work with people who want to be world champions.’ He’s not [wrong],” John McCarthy stated on the Weighing In podcast.
He clarified further by saying that Nicksick wanted fighters who would do anything and go to any lengths to become champs. Yes, Strickland was brave and continued to fight even after breaking his nose, but he still lost the fight. He himself admitted that he liked to fight more for money than championship belts. However, he did not try hard enough in the fight against Dricus Du Plessis and this is what McCarthy claims was the real issue for Nicksick.
All in all, it will be interesting to see how things will go, moving forward for Eric Nicksick and Sean Strickland. Will the two interact? Only time will tell. Regardless, let us know your thoughts on the whole situation in the comments down below.
The post “The Fault Is on Sean Strickland”- Daniel Cormier Forced to Defend Coach Eric Nicksick to Launch Scathing Attack appeared first on EssentiallySports.
