Fast facts
- Division: Middleweight
- Record: 24-3
- Nationality: South African
- Team/gym: Team CIT
- Notable wins: Robert Whittaker, Israel Adesanya, Sean Strickland (twice), Kamaru Usman, Roberto Soldić
Dricus du Plessis spent 50 minutes in a cage with Sean Strickland and won both fights. So there’s something a little strange about hearing him explain, carefully and with real admiration, why Strickland is the hardest man at 185 pounds to beat. Strange, unless you’ve followed the whole path, from a judo mat in Welkom to a split decision in Toronto. Then it sounds like a man who respects anyone who makes him work.
He was five when he started judo. Wrestling came at 12, kickboxing at 14. Somewhere in there he was also playing rugby all through school, which explains a lot about the way he fights and probably everything about how loudly he still cheers for the Springboks. At 17, in 2012, he won gold in K-1 rules at the WAKO Junior World Championships in the 86 kg division. Nobody from South Africa had ever medaled at those championships before. He looked around after that and saw there wasn’t much money in kickboxing, so he went to MMA instead. He was studying agricultural economics at the University of Pretoria at the time, and he walked away from it during his final year to fight full time.
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The long road through EFC and Poland
His career has a slow middle section that the hype crowd tends to skip. He started 4-0 as a pro after his 2013 debut, then ran into Garreth McLellan, the EFC middleweight champion at the time and later a UFC fighter, and got caught in a guillotine in the third round. Du Plessis did what young fighters who last tend to do. He went down to welterweight, went 3-0 in 2015, and then choked out veteran striker Martin van Staden with a guillotine in Round 3 to take the vacant EFC welterweight title. In 2017 he moved back up and submitted Yannick Bahati at 1:30 of Round 1 for the middleweight belt, which made him a two-division champion in South Africa’s biggest promotion.
Poland came next. At KSW 43 on April 14, 2018, he dropped Roberto Soldić with a left hook and stopped him, an upset that should have been his international breakout. Six months later at KSW 45, Soldić knocked him out in the third round. KSW’s account remembered the anniversary on X this week, posting that Soldić “crushed Dricus Du Plessis at welterweight!” Eight years on, that loss is one of only three on his record, and the man it happened to went on to become a UFC champion. He won his next KSW fight by TKO over Joilton Santos, went back to EFC, and submitted Brendan Lesar in the first round for the middleweight title.
One detail from this stretch matters more than people realize. In April 2023 he had surgery to fix a breathing problem in his nose. According to his coach, Morne Visser, du Plessis had been fighting in the UFC with “only 8% oxygen” coming through his nostrils. The surgery had been booked for 2020 and pushed back when the UFC called. In other words, he got through his first five UFC fights unable to breathe properly through his nose.
The climb
His UFC debut came on Oct. 11, 2020, a first-round knockout of Markus Perez. Then came the kind of logistical mess that follows fighters from outside the usual pipeline. Visa trouble cost him a March 2021 date with Trevin Giles, and when that fight finally happened at UFC 264 he knocked Giles out in Round 2 and earned Performance of the Night. A UFC 273 booking fell through three separate times, Chris Curtis to Anthony Hernandez to Kelvin Gastelum, before it collapsed completely a week out. He beat Brad Tavares on the cards, submitted Darren Till in the third round at UFC 282 in a Fight of the Night, and had Derek Brunson’s corner wave it off at 4:59 of Round 2.
The Robert Whittaker fight at UFC 290 in July 2023 was where people started paying attention. It was billed as a title eliminator, and du Plessis stopped the former champion in the second round. UFC.com ranked it the ninth biggest upset of that year. A leg injury kept him out of the Adesanya title fight at UFC 293, and Strickland took the spot and the belt.
The belt, and the man who took it
The Strickland feud got physical before it ever reached the cage. Dana White seated them within two rows of each other at UFC 296, Strickland motioned for fans to clear out and went after him, and security walked Strickland out. At UFC 297 on Jan. 20, 2024, du Plessis won a split decision and became the first South African to hold a UFC title. Media scoring was nearly as divided as the judges, with 13 of 24 outlets giving it to him.
The first defense, against Israel Adesanya at UFC 305, had less room for argument. He finished Adesanya with a face crank in Round 4, the first submission loss of Adesanya’s career, and ESPN named it Submission of the Year. Then came the Strickland rematch at UFC 312 in Sydney, a clear unanimous decision. In the photo from that night, du Plessis is holding up the hand of the man who had attacked him in the crowd 14 months before.
Analysts like to call his striking and his takedowns unorthodox. He fights out of an orthodox stance and comes forward constantly, throwing volume to the head, body and legs, and he has argued that what works matters more than what looks textbook. At one point he strung together nine straight UFC wins, tied with Chris Weidman for the third longest streak in the division’s history.
Khamzat Chimaev ended the reign at UFC 319 in August 2025 with a unanimous decision. Du Plessis took nearly a year off, then headlined UFC Fight Night 281 on July 18, 2026, and beat former welterweight champion Kamaru Usman on the scorecards in a $100,000 Fight of the Night. That gave him wins over four former UFC champions. He’s now 24-3 and No. 4 in the Knockout Daily middleweight rankings.
Where he stands
Strickland upset Chimaev at UFC 328 and has the belt again. Speaking on Fight Forecast, du Plessis explained why that result didn’t surprise him. “I took him down, I think seven times, but to hold him down is very, very hard,” he said, and he described how Strickland keeps fighting off his back until wrestlers wear themselves out. Nassourdine Imavov, who has won five straight including a knockout of Adesanya, looks like the next challenger, although nothing is official. Du Plessis says Imavov has earned it and expects him to lose anyway. “So I honestly believe we’re going to hear, ‘And Still!’” he said.
There’s also uncertainty at the top. Strickland, who has been dealing with injuries, posted on social media that the UFC underpays him and said he wants to box, including against Jake Paul. If he means it, a former champion with two wins over him starts to look like a pretty natural next choice for the belt.
In the meantime, someone wants a piece of him. Christian Leroy Duncan told MMA Fighting that du Plessis “could very well be” his next opponent if the title isn’t available, and he floated a headliner for the UFC’s London card in the first quarter of 2027. Duncan has to get past Brendan Allen at the Meta APEX on Oct. 10 first. Off the mat, du Plessis proposed to Vasti Spiller on his 31st birthday. Inside the cage, he’s still answering every question the same way he has since the guillotine in 2013, by walking forward.
