After first winning the UFC middleweight belt, Dricus du Plessis successfully defended his title on two occasions, but this past weekend that ‘bubble’ was well and truly burst by Russian Khamzat Chimaev.
Du Plessis ultimatley had no answer to Chimaev’s wrestling strengths, and there could be no doubts about the unanimous decision, although the bout itself was really terrible entertainment.
Despite the result, multiple reliable reports have suggested Du Plessis will still walk away with around $3 million (nearly R53 million).
However, had he won the fight, this amount would have increased by a further $500,000.
Dricus du Plessis handed a lesson
Interestingly, Morne Visser – the longtime coach of Du Plessis- has made it crystal clear that there will be no immediate rematch with Chimaev.
“I’ve been asked, ‘Do you want to do him a rematch?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not,’” he admitted. “Obviously, we’d like to fight him very soon again, but there is no way I’ll take the rematch with us being a little bit behind in our Russian style of wrestling. That is what it is, nothing else. He just knows how to control you on the floor.
“In the meantime, we’ve got to fix our sh*t asap, and I know what to do. I know exactly what to do and where to do it. It’s a big change, we’re going to have to do a big move to fix things,” Visser added.
“Instead of spending time preparing for going to another fight camp to prepare for RDR, I would rather spend that time to fix the problem that we’ve got, and then go into a camp. So, I won’t just take a fight because fights are available. I want to fix this problem, because we’re going to face Khamzat [again] and I want to destroy him this time.”
Do you think this is a good move for the player and club?
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