The South African’s first chance to extend his reign comes seven months on from his crowning at UFC 297 in Toronto, Canada. He headlined the promotion’s first PPV of 2024 in competition for the 185-pound gold, which was then held by Sean Strickland.
“Stillknocks” brought the American’s divisional rule to a quick end, falling on the right side of a split decision after five rounds of competitive action to rip the title from Strickland’s grasp in his very first defense.
Ahead of Saturday’s event, the promotion has released the full Du Plessis vs. Strickland fight from UFC 297 on its official YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s53Lz5NWhm4
Du Plessis will now look to ensure he achieves a feat that Strickland failed to this year by recording a successful defense. To do so, he must stall Adesanya’s push for a historic three-time title crowning.
The Nigerian-New Zealander will be making his return after losing the belt to Strickland close to a year ago. To regain it, Adesanya has his South African rival’s UFC 0 in his sights.
Dricus Du Plessis recently looked back on the fight that saw him crowned as the UFC middleweight champion earlier this year.
Du Plessis is currently gearing up for his first defense of the 185-pound title, which goes down (under) in Perth, Australia, as the UFC 305 pay-per-view main event next month.
The South African will finally square off with Israel Adesanya close to a year on from their originally planned showdown. After upsetting Robert Whittaker, Du Plessis was expected to challenge “The Last Stylebender” at UFC 293 in Sydney last September.
But their rivalry — a sensitive and historical one born out of Du Plessis’ controversial comments regarding the UFC’s African champs — was put on the back burner after an injury to “Stillknocks.”
In his place, Sean Strickland made the long-haul flight to Australia and capitalized in emphatic fashion, outpointing Adesanya dominantly.
While that served as another delay in Adesanya vs. Du Plessis coming to fruition, the latter brought the matchup back to the surface when he rendered Strickland’s reign a short one at UFC 297 in Toronto this past January.
Du Plessis Describes Fighting ‘Very Tricky’ Strickland
During a recent appearance on the All Talk podcast, Du Plessis reflected on his experience fighting the unique style of Strickland in Canada six months ago.
After noting his former opponent’s shock win over Adesanya, the reigning champ outlined the difficulty that comes with fighting “Tarzan’s” unorthodox approach.
More than handling that, however, Du Plessis said his real agitation came when Strickland failed to deliver on his promise of a ‘fight-to-the-death’ war — a criticism that has since reared its head again after Strickland’s victory over Paulo Costa at UFC 302.
“(Strickland’s) a very tricky guy. He’s hard to hit, he has a sneaky jab — not a lot of power, but he hits the target and is really, really hard to catch,” Du Plessis said. “Let me say it this way, it was frustrating (to fight him) because he said, ‘Till death,’ and he just walked backwards the whole time. So that was a little frustrating.
“But I mean, he did catch me with that jab for the first two rounds the whole time,” Du Plessis continued. “To be honest, I felt the jabs and I just thought, ‘I’ll just go through them.’ All of a sudden, I just couldn’t see out of my eye anymore. I realized, ‘I have to start blocking these.’”
Having successfully gotten past Strickland’s style in narrow fashion, Du Plessis is next tasked with replicating his ex-rival’s feat from 2023.
Sean Strickland still believes that he was screwed over by the judges in his last fight at UFC 297 in January.
The then-middleweight champion lost the title to Dricus Du Plessis in his first defense via the scorecards in Toronto, Canada.
Judge Sal D’Amato scored the fight in Strickland’s favor, giving him rounds one, three and five. Derek Cleary and Eric Colon, meanwhile, saw the fight going the opposite way and both scored the middle rounds to Du Plessis, giving Strickland the first and final rounds.
In Strickland’s opinion, it’s not his actions in these fights that are the problem, it’s the judges, the way they score the fights, and how easily influenced they are by corners.
“It also comes down to bad f****** judges that like, you know, they see guys throwing output and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s doing good.’ Like, what? No. Even when I fought Jared, and Jared’s a good guy, he’ll throw a combination, I block every single one of them and his corner is like, ‘That’s good, that right hand landed,’ and I’m like, what do you f****** know, didn’t even f****** touch me. But, you know, you have stupid a** judges that are like listening to the corners, as much as they don’t say that, whenever you have a corner saying, ‘You’re winning, you’re throwing punches,’ and the judge is like, ‘He must be winning, his corner is saying so.’
“Dude, judges don’t give a f*** bro, look at judging like a lot of times, they don’t even watch the fight. They don’t give a f***, they’re just government officials just f****** collecting a paycheck.”
