UFC middleweight champion is happy to take on Sean Strickland just over a year after their last bout — but he isn’t quite sure that the American deserves a shot at his crown quite so soon.
Du Plessis will fight Strickland in the UFC 312 main event from Sydney, Australia late on Saturday night as the South African champion seeks to extend his unbeaten run in the organisation’s 185-pound weight category with what would be a second win over the outspoken American middleweight.
But having already spent 25-minutes in the cage with his rival in their first bout in January 2024, Du Plessis admits that Strickland will once again be a tough test as he praised his rival’s coaching under Xtreme Couture’s Eric Nicksick.
“His team is incredible,” Du Plessis told reporters, including The Mac Life.
“He has an incredibly good coach. Coach Eric is very well respected, and I have the world’s respect for him.I know he’s a master at the game plan and figuring it out, but so is my coaches and my team.
“So yeah, very similar in-fight because we both now know and how much could have really changed. It’s just about being cleaner and better at everything.”
Having said that, Du Plessis says that he can’t quite understand Strickland’s stance that he should be have been awarded the judges’ (split) decision that went the way of the champion last time around.
“For me, that fight, the split decision, was the biggest shock to me,” he said. “I don’t think it was a split decision. It was the biggest shock of that whole thing. But it was a great fight. It was a war, you know?
“If you play the odds, like Strickland, in having eight split decisions in your career, you know, a split decision is what you call a coin flip. If you flip that coin eight times, you’re bound to get unlucky a couple of times. You know, he got lucky with the split decision, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Now, I am very happy that they made this fight.
“I was asking for this fight up until the Khamzat happened [defeated Robert Whittaker], and I would have preferred that fight, but I’m really happy this fight’s happening, because now I can go and say, we’re going to settle this. We’re going to put this to bed.”
