Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC

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, and 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. I’m 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 division.

“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 we’re very respectful toward one another. And I’m pulling for him in a lot of ways, 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, as well as 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, and I think the way that he started to fight and understand kind of who and what he is as a fighter, he’s awkward in a way like Sean is but with more power,” Nicksick said. “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 that we brought over was when Brad fought him and we had that ability to take that game plan and understand how to implement it, but Dricus only got better since the Brad fight. So it’s a very interesting matchup to me.

Of course, looking at things from an Xs and Os standpoint, Nicksick sees UFC 305 as an interesting puzzle to solve on both ends, and expects that to play out on Saturday.

“I’m curious on how they game plan it,” Nicksick said. “I think if I’m Dricus’ camp, I’ll take a hard look at what we did with Sean, and understanding the cage control and what we did there, and try to bottle Izzy up.

“I think Izzy needs to reverse engineer that game plan and go, ‘Hey, this is what these guys did to me and the blueprint’s out, and here’s how we have to try to keep my back off the cage and implement our game plan out in the open.’”