Coach: Sean Strickland Used Dricus Du Plessis Brawl for Motivation

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.

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.