Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
Last but not least, let’s swing for the fences, shall we?
Dricus Du Plessis has become one of the company’s most recognizable fighters thanks to defeats of Robert Whittaker, Sean Strickland and Israel Adesanya in his last three bouts.
The Strickland win yielded a title belt at middleweight and the win over Adesanya, a two-time champion at 185 pounds, legitimized it to the point where the South African has climbed to a No. 6 position on the much-coveted pound-for-pound list.
He’s penciled in for a match with Strickland in the near future, but another result from UFC 308 last weekend in the Middle East may have put that one on the permanent back burner.
Khamzat Chimaev pursued ex-champ Whittaker from across the cage, got him down and into a vulnerable position, then squeezed his jaw to the point of dislodging teeth in recording a first-round stoppage on the main show in Abu Dhabi.
The official time was 3:34 of the first round and it took roughly that long for the suggestions to come that it was Chimaev, now ranked third after a 10-spot spike, who’d make a much more intriguing match than Strickland, who escaped with a split decision over retread Paulo Costa at UFC 302 in June.
It’s hardly hyperbolic considering “Borz” fought twice in 10 days during the COVID-addled summer of 2020. In fact, the biggest stumbling block may be whether Du Plessis is willing to take on such a threat with something less than a full camp.
For the sake of the show, we hope he says yes.
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