Dricus du Plessis was one of the reigning UFC title holders to lose their title in 2025.
Du Plessis, who entered his UFC 319 bout with undefeated Khamzat Chimaev as one of the greatest middleweights of all time, lost a lopsided unanimous decision to Chimaev. Chimaev dominated the reigning defending champions with a wrestling fire that completely shut down Du Plessis’ offensive game plan.
Du Plessis is targeting a matchup with another top prospect, possibly Nassourdine Imavov or Brendan Allen, for his next fight as he tries to work his way back into a new title shot. If Du Plessis gets another crack at Chimaev, his old coach believes it will be another dominant affair that goes the other way.
Coach: Dricus du Plessis will ‘f-up’ Khamzat Chimaev in the rematch
In a recent interview with Battle PredictionDu Plessis’ longtime coach Morne Visser assessed what went wrong at UFC 319.
“We made little, little mistakes that cost us a lot every minute of every round in that fight,” Visser said of Du Plessis versus Chimaev.
“So simple, easy solutions. We just weren’t prepared. It sounds stupid what I’m about to say, but we weren’t prepared. We’ve never been prepared to fight a guy who doesn’t want to fight. If we knew he was just going to try that, I would have changed Dricus’ basics. No punches, no kicks, just wrestling the guy. And Dricus is good enough to do that. But it’s an MMA fight. I know Marc Goddard doesn’t do that. I agree with me… you had had to go through that battle many times. He didn’t want to fight.
“It seemed like we knew nothing on the floor,” Visser continued about Chimaev’s performance against Du Plessis. “I have to be honest, we didn’t know anything about how to get a blanket off of us. But this time he’s going to be in trouble. Look, he has zero chance against Dricus if he gets up. Zero. He has zero chance if Dricus is in the clinch. His only chance is to keep us on the ground. So that’s the one thing we have to solve. And when you look back at the fight, people say, ‘Ah, you don’t know how to do that.’ wrestling.” That’s all he did. He only had to hold Dricus for 25 minutes to win the fight. He did, so he did his job well. We will ensure this never happens again.” (h/t Yahoo Sports)
The loss to Du Plessis snapped an eleven-fight winning streak and was his first loss in the UFC Octagon.
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