Fight Forecast<\/a>. \u201cI would love to be on that April card, the Miami card. There\u2019s no opponent yet, there\u2019s no contract yet, we don\u2019t have any of that. Whoever. Let\u2019s go. I\u2019m ready to go again and get back to my belt as soon as possible. Doesn\u2019t really matter who it is. I would, of course, love for it to be Khamzat and redeem that loss, but for me right now, the next fight is the most important fight of my life.\u201d<\/p>\nChimaev is also yet to fight since defeating du Plessis. In recent months, Chimaev has flirted with a move up to light heavyweight where he has targeted champion Alex Pereira.<\/p>\n
However, if du Plessis has any say, Chimaev will stick around long enough for them to rematch. And he\u2019ll do everything in his power to prepare for Chimaev\u2019s dominant wrestling style.<\/p>\n
\u201cFighting Khamzat again is what I\u2019m after,\u201d du Plessis said. \u201cExpecting any surprises? No. There\u2019s not going to be any surprises. That is the way he\u2019s going to fight, and if he tries anything different it will be a terrible night, but we all know that. He did what he had to do to win that belt. We can\u2019t hate on him for that. He did what he needed to do. It\u2019s the rules of the game and he did it. So saying that it\u2019s not fair, it is fair, he did what he had to do. Not how I would win my belt or would like to, but that\u2019s what he did. Now it\u2019s my responsibility to go and fix that to stop him from doing that again and get him to fight my fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always great if you have a guy that comes and fights because it\u2019s my style and it\u2019s what I love to do entertain, to hear the crowd go crazy,\u201d du Plessis added. \u201cBut he knows that and that\u2019s why he went for that style. Once again, I understand that it wasn\u2019t the best fight to watch. In fact, it was a terrible fight to watch, but he did what he had to do to win that title and good for him. My responsibility is to stop him from doing that and that\u2019s what I will do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if Chimaev isn\u2019t next, du Plessis expects a shot to regain the title to be booked soon, especially if he gets back on the winning track in impressive fashion against whoever signs on to face him in Miami.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll have my belt back before the end of this year,\u201d du Plessis said when asked for his most optimistic 2026 prediction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dricus du Plessis knows there\u2019s a lot on the line in his next fight. It\u2019s been six months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-479934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479934","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=479934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}