Eric Nicksick is making sure that Sean
Strickland’s recent brawl with upcoming opponent Dricus Du
Plessis doesn’t take an emotional toll on the UFC middleweight
champion.
Advertisement
Strickland is slated to defend his middleweight strap against Du
Plessis in the main event at UFC 297
on Jan. 20 in Toronto. The bad blood between the two started during
a recent seasonal press conference where “Stillknocks” brought up
Strickland’s abusive childhood.
The feud boiled over while the two were in attendance at UFC 296
the next day. Strickland was seen leaping over chairs to attack Du
Plessis after an exchange of words before being escorted out of the
T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
As Strickland’s head coach at Xtreme Couture, Nicksick admits that
the champ was triggered by the altercation with Du Plessis.
However, Nicksick claims to have made sure that Strickland has used
it for motivation heading into their upcoming fight.
“There’s two sides to that coin: Sean has no problem saying what he
says about everybody else, so people are going to probably poke and
say things about him, as welI,” Nicksick told MMAjunkie.com. “I
think it’s a tough row to [hoe], so you can’t get too emotional
about those situations. They are just words, but at the end of the
day, I did feel like he was triggered and there was a few days
where it just kind of motivated him.
“The motivation was [already] there, believe me. But I wanted him
to understand we need to have the right motivation. It didn’t need
to be this infuriated guy going in there like, ‘I want to kill this
guy,’ because that takes us out of our game. It takes us out of our
element and what we’re good at. He’s been great ever since then. We
had a good conversation about that, and I just told him I was proud
of him.
“I did say, ‘Hey, fighting emotional is not who we are. And
stylistically, I think that favors Dricus more. It opens us up
more, so we need to stick with our game plan and stick with what we
want to do and don’t allow your emotions to take this over.”
Strickland will be making his first title defense at UFC 297 after
an upset win over Israel
Adesanya at UFC 293 in September. Meanwhile, his South African
opponent goes into the fight on a six-fight UFC winning streak that
includes a knockout win over former champ Robert
Whittaker this past July.