Former UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis’ previous praise of Khamzat Chimaev didn’t last long after their UFC 319 title fight.

Dricus du Plessis was one of several reigning UFC titleholders to lose their belts in 2025.

Du Plessis, who entered his UFC 319 matchup with the unbeaten Khamzat Chimaev as one of the greatest middleweights of all-time, lost a lopsided unanimous decision to Chimaev. Chimaev dominated the reigning titleholder with a wrestling barrage that completely shut down Du Plessis’ offensive gameplan.

Du Plessis is targeting a matchup with another top contender, potentially either Nassourdine Imavov or Brendan Allen, for his next fight as he looks to work his way back to another title shot. If Du Plessis gets another crack at Chimaev, his longtime coach believes it’ll be another dominant affair, going the other way.

Coach: Dricus du Plessis will ‘f— up’ Khamzat Chimaev in rematch

In a recent interview with Fight Forecast, Du Plessis’ longtime coach Morne Visser assessed what went wrong at UFC 319.

“We made small, small mistakes that cost us dearly every minute of every round in that fight,“ Visser said of Du Plessis vs. Chimaev.

“So, easy, easy fixes. We were just not prepared. It sounds stupid what I’m gonna say now, but we were not prepared. We’ve never been prepared to fight a guy who’s not willing to fight. If we knew he was gonna try to just do that, I would have changed Dricus’s base. No punches, no kicks, just flipping wrestle the guy. And Dricus is good enough to do that. But it’s an MMA fight. I know Marc Goddard doesn’t agree with me … you should have stood that fight up many, many times. He didn’t want to fight.

“It looked like if we knew nothing on the floor,” Visser continued on Chimaev’s performance against Du Plessis. “I must be honest, we knew nothing about how to get a blanket off us. But this time around, he’s gonna get f*cked up. Look, he’s got zero chance against Dricus with the stand up. Zero. He’s got zero chance with Dricus in the clinch. His only chance is to keep us on the floor. So that’s the only thing we need to fix. And if you look back at the fight, keep people saying, ‘Ah, you don’t know how to wrestle.‘ That’s the only thing he did. He only had to hold onto Dricus for 25 minutes to win the fight. That’s what he did, so he did his job well. We’ll make sure that will never, ever happens again.” (h/t Yahoo Sports)

Du Plessis’ loss snapped an 11-fight winning streak and was his first defeat in the UFC Octagon.