Takedown totals are among the most seductive numbers in this sport, and among the most useless. A guy gets credited with a takedown whether he holds you for 90 seconds and rips your liver or whether you pop back up before the cameraman finds the angle. Dricus du Plessis just handed us the best case study I’ve seen for ignoring the column entirely, and the case study is Sean Strickland.
In a recent sit-down picked up by MMA Weekly, du Plessis was asked what makes Strickland such a pain to fight. He started with the wrestling, which is funny, because most people start with the jab and the trash talk. Du Plessis said Strickland has always been a great wrestler, and then he gave the number.
“I took him down, I think, seven times. But to hold him down is very, very hard,” du Plessis said.
Seven takedowns. If you read that number on a stat sheet with no context, you’d assume the guy getting taken down spent the night as a rug. Du Plessis is telling you the opposite. The takedowns happened, they didn’t stick, and the fight kept getting dragged back to the place where Strickland likes it. When the man who completed the takedowns is the one telling you they didn’t matter much, believe him.
The Chimaev Fight Proved It at the Highest Price
Khamzat Chimaev was the boogeyman of the division for years, a grappler who smothered people and finished them. Strickland, now a two-time UFC middleweight champion, beat him by split decision at UFC 328. That’s about as close as a title fight gets on the cards, so I won’t pretend it was a rout. What interests me is how du Plessis says it happened, because his read is all about pace and nothing about pretty.
Du Plessis described Strickland as hard to hold down and very fit, a guy who can always go five rounds and who is very good at dragging people into his style.
His version of the fight goes like this. Chimaev had Round 1. He went hard, because he figured that once he got Strickland’s back, a submission was coming. Strickland didn’t give it to him. Du Plessis called Strickland “very good on the ground. Especially defensively.” And instead of burning everything to scramble out, Strickland kept punching from bad spots. According to du Plessis, even when Chimaev had him down, Strickland didn’t focus on defending or getting off his back. He just kept fighting.
That’s the detail I keep chewing on. The textbook answer to being mounted by a killer is to prioritize escape. Strickland apparently treated the bottom position as another place to keep his work rate up, which forces the guy on top to keep spending energy just to stay there. Chimaev spent it. Then, per du Plessis, Strickland started stopping the takedowns, Chimaev got tired, and the fight turned into a Strickland fight. “Strickland wins that every single time,” du Plessis said.
Why Handicappers Keep Getting This Wrong
Here’s my argument, and I’ll make it with my own wallet’s scar tissue in mind. People price Strickland fights off the eye test, and the eye test hates him. He doesn’t have the most technical striking. He doesn’t have one-punch power. Nothing he does looks like a highlight. MMA Weekly said as much in its writeup, and I don’t think anybody in his camp would argue.
But the things du Plessis listed are the things that win the back half of a long fight. Cardio, durability under a top game, and the willingness to keep throwing when the position says you should be turtling. None of that shows up in a two-minute clip package. All of it shows up around minute 15, when the opponent who built his plan on an early finish starts breathing through his mouth.
That’s why I lean toward the guy whose style makes you pay interest on every exchange, and away from the guy whose fans post his best moment on a loop. Chimaev’s style is a loan against the first round. If the submission doesn’t come, the bill arrives later, and Strickland is the collector.
Du Plessis is a useful witness here for a simple reason. He’s been in there with Strickland, he scored those takedowns, and he still walked away talking about how hard the guy is to keep down. Fighters who have shared a cage with somebody rarely hand out compliments that cost them nothing, and this one costs du Plessis a little. He’s admitting his own offense didn’t produce what the numbers suggest.
So the next time someone sells you a Strickland opponent on the grounds that he can take him down, ask the follow-up. Taking him down was never the problem. Du Plessis did it seven times by his own count, and the guy who did it to him at UFC 328 left without the belt.
