Former UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis\u2019 previous praise of Khamzat Chimaev didn\u2019t last long after their UFC 319 title fight.<\/p>\n
Dricus du Plessis was one of several reigning UFC titleholders to lose their belts in 2025.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 offensive gameplan.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>, his longtime coach believes it\u2019ll be another dominant affair, going the other way.<\/p>\n Coach: Dricus du Plessis will \u2018f\u2014 up\u2019 Khamzat Chimaev in rematch<\/p>\n In a recent interview with Fight Forecast<\/a>, Du Plessis\u2019 longtime coach Morne Visser assessed what went wrong at UFC 319.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe made small, small mistakes that cost us dearly every minute of every round in that fight,\u201c Visser said of Du Plessis vs. Chimaev.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, easy, easy fixes. We were just not prepared. It sounds stupid what I\u2019m gonna say now, but we were not prepared. We\u2019ve never been prepared to fight a guy who\u2019s not willing to fight. If we knew he was gonna try to just do that, I would have changed Dricus\u2019s base. No punches, no kicks, just flipping wrestle the guy. And Dricus is good enough to do that. But it\u2019s an MMA fight. I know Marc Goddard doesn\u2019t agree with me \u2026 you should have stood that fight up many, many times. He didn\u2019t want to fight.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looked like if we knew nothing on the floor,\u201d Visser continued on Chimaev\u2019s performance against Du Plessis. \u201cI must be honest, we knew nothing about how to get a blanket off us. But this time around, he\u2019s gonna get f*cked up. Look, he\u2019s got zero chance against Dricus with the stand up. Zero. He\u2019s got zero chance with Dricus in the clinch. His only chance is to keep us on the floor. So that\u2019s the only thing we need to fix. And if you look back at the fight, keep people saying, \u2018Ah, you don\u2019t know how to wrestle.\u2018 That\u2019s the only thing he did. He only had to hold onto Dricus for 25 minutes to win the fight. That\u2019s what he did, so he did his job well. We\u2019ll make sure that will never, ever happens again.\u201d (h\/t Yahoo Sports<\/a>)<\/p>\n Du Plessis\u2019 loss snapped an 11-fight winning streak and was his first defeat in the UFC Octagon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis\u2019 previous praise of Khamzat Chimaev didn\u2019t last long after their UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,20207,786,4120,785,85,787],"class_list":{"0":"post-425277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-dricus-du-plessis","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-khamzat-chimaev","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-ufc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}