Following his highly impressive victory over Sean Strickland in Australia, the future remains bright for UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis.
Not only are there several top-tier challengers still left for ‘Stillknocks’ to silence at 185lbs, but the door’s also well-and-truly open for a potential champ vs champ showdown between Dricus Du Plessis and 205lb king Alex ‘Poatan’ Pereira.
As the South African brawler ponders his next move, one UFC legend is already predicting that Dricus Du Plessis could best both an undefeated phenom, and the stone-faced superstar dominating the division above him.
Dricus Du Plessis backed to beat Khamzat Chimaev and Alex Pereira
Speaking via the latest episode of the Pound-4-Pound podcast, former UFC double champion Henry Cejudo claimed that he’d back Du Plessis to defeat undefeated phenom Khamzat Chimaev.
“I personally think he beats up Khamzat Chimaev, I don’t think he’s going to be easy to submit. I think DDP is scrambly, and I think his conditioning, bro; I want to put him up there [with the best cardio’s in the UFC].
“And he looked so good that fifth round where he was like ‘Hey, I was able to go another five more rounds. I mean this guy’s ready, and this guy’s going to be a problem for anybody at 185 pounds, and I am excited to see this dude fight Khamzat.”
Should Du Plessis hand Chimaev his first professional loss, Cejudo would love to see the South African challenging himself by moving up to 205lbs and facing Alex Pereira.
“Even though I do believe that Pereira is going to beat Magomed Ankalaev, I’ll definitely put my money with DDP,” said Cejudo, with Pereira vs Ankalaev set for the main event of UFC 313 in March.
“I think DDP, stylistically, is a problem, and I know DDP is going to go in there and f—- wrestle. And with the grappling, I think that could be very problematic.
“But there’s one thing that I will say is he will need to be careful because Alex Pereira does a really good job of countering, and there’s a lot of little sloppy things that DDP does, but I think I put my strengths and his mixing of the fighting against a guy like Alex Pereira.”
Kamaru Usman believes DDP’s biggest threat comes from French ‘Sniper’
Whilst Cejudo believes that ‘Stillknocks’ has what it takes to beat both Chimaev and Pereira, his podcast co-host Kamaru Usman sees a much sterner test for Du Plessis at 185lbs.
“From what I saw yesterday [at UFC 312], there’s still a big question mark on potentially two guys that I think have a great shot at dethroning DDP,” stated Usman.
“I do think that if he fought Nassourdine Imavov the way that he fought Sean Strickland, I don’t like that fight for DDP… Think about it… We saw how [Imavov’s] standup was with Israel Adesanya; when you primarily stand up with Nassourdine Imavov, man, he might be the sharper guy right besides Israel Adesanya right now with his striking in that division.”
Nassourdine Imavov knocked out Israel Adesanya in the main event of UFC Saudi Arabia earlier this month and recently overtook Strickland as the #1 ranked middleweight contender.
“I would also give Brendan Allen [a chance] … I want to see those two fights first; Khamzat Chimaev and potentially Nassourdine Imavov, then potentially move up – because then you’ve gone through the Top 5 and you deserve to move up.”
Brendan Allen currently retains the #9 spot in the rankings and returns to action on the main card of this weekend’s Fight Night event against 13-2 contender Anthony ‘Fluffy’ Hernandez.