Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight titleholder, Dricus Du Plessis, will defend his 185-pound strap against former division champion, Sean Strickland, atop the upcoming UFC 312 pay-per-view (PPV) card this weekend in Sydney.
Disappointed fight fans who wanted to see Du Plessis battle undefeated middleweight menace Khamzat Chimaev are not alone. Turns out “Stillknocks” was also hoping to score a five-round showdown against “Borz,” but matchmakers had other ideas.
I guess there were too many unanswered questions.
“I would have preferred the Khamzat fight, I think he deserved it more even though he didn’t have as many fights,” Du Plessis told ESPN. “If you look at Strickland’s last fight against [Paulo] Costa, that doesn’t warrant a title fight. That was super boring. I was sitting there watching that fight, thinking: ‘What?’ It was a dominant performance by Strickland, but a terrible fight to watch. Then, Khamzat comes in and he [beats] Rob [Whittaker] the way he did it, that’s what gets you to jump the line.”
Chimaev improved to 14-0 by obliterating former middleweight champion, Robert Whittaker, in the UFC 308 co-main event last October in Abu Dhabi, marking his ninth first-round finish and pushing the 30 year-old “Borz” to No. 3 in the 185-pound rankings.
Strickland (29-6) decisioned a sleepy Paulo Costa at UFC 302.
“I thought [the Khamzat fight] was going to happen. I thought it would have been great for me; I would have loved that. It got me super excited,” Du Plessis (22-2) continued. “But putting the Strickland thing to bed … I have two decisions in my whole life, one being a split against Strickland. The guy who has evolved more over the last year since we last fought is the guy who is going to win this fight. It gets me excited because now, you can really compare the Dricus that fought him the first time and the Dricus that fought him the second time because styles make fights at the end of the day.”
Strickland opened (and remains) the slight betting underdog.
