Eric Nicksick reveals the UFC was close to pulling Sean Strickland from Israel Adesanya due to him punching the fan on the street

Sean Strickland was close to not fighting at UFC 293, according to his coach Eric Nicksick.

Strickland was headlining UFC 293 in Australia against Israel Adesanya for the middleweight title, in a fight he got due to Dricus Du Plessis not being healthy enough to take the scrap.

With Strickland already not being the first choice, Nicksick said the plan was to not do anything to get them pulled. However, the one time Strickland decided to walk around Australia without him, he punched a fan and admitted to it in an interview.

Although the punch wasn’t a huge deal, Eric Nickisck revealed the Australian government was not happy with it and there was talk of pulling Sean Strickland from the fight. To add to that, Jared Cannonier’s corners flew down to Australia as it became more likely that Strickland wouldn’t be fighting Adesanya.

Sean Strickland was nearly off UFC 293

“Apparently the Australian government and whoever heard this, they got word of this and it went downhill from there. It got to the point where they were flying John Crouch out from Arizona from MMA Lab to come out and corner Jared Cannonier,” Nicksick said on The MMA Hour about Sean Strickland’s UFC 293 title fight.

“When I heard that, I was like ‘oh bro, we are off, they are going to pull us from this card.’ Remember these guys probably didn’t want Sean in this spot, to begin with, we were walking on thin ice the moment we got there… That’s not a cheap flight, that’s a long travel, Jared Cannonier is already here, Rob Emerson was already there with him. It was probably pretty close to getting pulled. I don’t know what changed or what happened behind the scenes.”

Ultimately, Sean Strickland remained on UFC 293 and ended up becoming the new middleweight champion with a lopsided decision over Israel Adesanya. However, just days before he did that, Eric Nicksick was worried the fight was off and they put all this work in for nothing.