Dricus du Plessis has his chance to face another former champion at UFC Oklahoma City, but it wasn’t an easy negotiation according to the South African star.
With the July 18 event two weeks away, the UFC only recently made a middleweight main event bout between du Plessis and Kamaru Usman official. Du Plessis had previously hinted that a “little someone” was delaying the announcement of the fight and he confirmed he was taking a shot at Usman in an interview with Fight Forecast.
“He didn’t want to
sign the contract, I know that for a fact,” du Plessis said. “I spoke to the UFC and they said, ‘We finally convinced him to sign.’ If you need convincing to sign, that’s a problem, but I can’t blame him, I would also not want to fight me right now. It would be the smart move not to sign the fight, but let’s go.”
Usman is widely regarded as one of the best welterweights of all time, having won his first 15 UFC fights, a run that included a championship win in 2019 followed by five successful title defenses. He has competed once at middleweight, losing a close decision to Khamzat Chimaev, and now seems determined to earn a shot at gold at 185 pounds.
At 39, Usman may be past his prime, but du Plessis still sees him as a worthy challenge and one that will prove he’s shored up his weaknesses after being out-wrestled by Chimaev and losing his middleweight belt at UFC 319 .
“You think you’ve been waiting? I’ve been waiting,” du Plessis said. “We’ve been talking about the fight for a long time, he’s mentioned the fight way before we made the fight and I said, ‘Well, cool. I’ll take that fight.’ Now people will say, ‘Why don’t you fight [Nassourdine] Imavov?’ I don’t mind that fight either. I want to fight somebody that gets me to my title again. Kamaru Usman, yes, he’s a bit older, but now you look at what [Justin] Gaethje just did, so that throws that argument out the window immediately.
“Kamaru Usman is arguably the best welterweight ever alongside with Georges St-Pierre if you go on title defenses and all that… He has a win over Sean Strickland, he had that very close fight with Khamzat Chimaev and that’s why I wanted this fight. What’s it going to mean for me to go out there and beat another striker? I’ve done that many times, I’ve defended my belt against strikers. I’ve beaten the best, which is Strickland, at middleweight, twice. So, why go out there and fight another striker? People are going to be like, ‘OK, we know you can strike, what about the wrestling and grappling?” because of my last fight. I want to go out there and prove what I’ve done. Go out and figure this out and go show the problem that the middleweights have on their hands now because now I am more complete—and I was a complete fighter—but now I am complete in all areas and I can’t wait to go and show that.”
Prior to the loss to Chimaev, du Plessis was on his way to establishing himself as one of the all-time greats himself. He went 6-0 to start his UFC career, then rattled off wins over fellow middleweight stars Robert Whittaker, Sean Strickland, Israel Adesanya, and Strickland again, with those last three bouts being championship fights.
Du Plessis has been on the shelf since August and is eager to bounce back from his first UFC loss.
“It’s been long,” du Plessis said. “I was supposed to fight in April, got the injury. I think that was all for a reason because the fire in me to get back in there is like never before.”
