Eric Nicksick, head coach of Sean Strickland, is keenly interested in the UFC 305 middleweight title fight between Dricus du Plessis and Israel Adesanya, viewing it as a razor-close matchup and a potential opportunity for Strickland to challenge the winner.
Eric Nicksick will have a vested interest in Saturday’s middleweight title fight between Dricus du Plessis and Israel Adesanya. The rivals headline UFC 305 in Perth, Western Australia.
Nicksick, head coach of former middleweight champ Sean Strickland, expects his fighter to be next for the winner. Since he has game-planned for both guys in the past year, Nicksick sees it as a razor-close and compelling matchup.
“I kind of consider it a 50-50 coin flip, man. I really do,” Nicksick told MMA Fighting. “I’m very curious on seeing what type of Izzy comes back. In a lot of ways, selfishly, I’m pulling for him because the division is much better with a talented, championship-level Israel Adesanya in the mix.”
“And I really took a liking to Dricus over the last year or so. I wouldn’t say we’re close, but we’re friendly and respectful toward one another. I’m pulling for him too because I think he has been overlooked severely over the years.”
Strickland captured the title with a lopsided decision win over Adesanya at UFC 293 this past September. But the reign was short-lived as du Plessis won a split decision over Strickland in their title fight at UFC 297 in January.
Nicksick was familiar with du Plessis because his fighter Brad Tavares dropped a decision to the South African champ at UFC 276 in July 2022. Even with that knowledge and du Plessis being as aggressive yet tactical as he is, Nicksick admits du Plessis was very tough to prepare for.
“He’s a problem, man, and he’s only getting better,” Nicksick said. “The way he started to fight and understand who and what he is as a fighter—he’s awkward like Sean but with more power. He hits very hard. It was very difficult for us to find particular sparring partners for Dricus.”
“You’re not going to find many people that can fight like him. Our best knowledge came from when Brad fought him. We used that game plan, but Dricus only got better since the Brad fight. So it’s a very interesting matchup to me.”
Looking at things from an Xs and Os standpoint, Nicksick sees UFC 305 as an intriguing puzzle to solve on both ends. He expects that to play out on Saturday.
“I’m curious how they’ll game plan it,” Nicksick said. “If I’m Dricus’ camp, I’d take a hard look at what we did with Sean—understanding cage control—and try to bottle Izzy up.”
“Izzy needs to reverse engineer that game plan,” he continued. “‘Hey, this is what these guys did to me; the blueprint’s out,’ and here’s how we keep my back off the cage and implement our game plan out in the open.”