Talking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Nicksick went into detail on his frustrations after a difficult night that saw his corner advice seemingly fall on deaf ears as Strickland jabbed his way to a lopsided decision defeat, with Du Plessis winning 50-45, 50-45, 49-46 to retain his title.
“It was just uninspired fighting, to me,” Nicksick admitted.
“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.”
Nicksick attempted to rouse his fighter in the corner between rounds as he implored Strickland to change up his approach, but Strickland either wasn’t able to, or simply opted not to, as he continued with his jabbing and teeping throughout the contest.
“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.”
Nicksick said that, in the light of Strickland’s loss, and the manner of it, the fighter needs to sit down and decide for himself just how he wants to approach his career moving forward, with the coach wanting to place his focus in fighters who have a burning desire to capture championship gold at the highest level.
“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.”
