{"id":542302,"date":"2026-03-15T16:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T16:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/542302\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T16:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T16:46:08","slug":"dricus-du-plessis-sean-strickland-has-a-very-good-chance-against-khamzat-chimaev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/542302\/","title":{"rendered":"Dricus du Plessis: Sean Strickland has \u2018a very good chance\u2019 against Khamzat Chimaev"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Dricus du Plessis says no one should count out Sean Strickland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Strickland is set to challenge UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev for the title in the main event of UFC 328 in May. Chimaev won the title with a dominant performance over du Plessis in August, and given du Plessis\u2019 pair of bouts with Strickland, the former middleweight champion has plenty of experience against both Chimaev and Strickland. When they lock horns this summer, du Plessis believes Strickland has a good chance to pull off the upset.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI know Imavov and Khamzat kind of don\u2019t want to fight each other. I\u2019m not really excited for that fight,\u201d du Plessis told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=63O0p2eEVU4\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SA Boxing Talk<\/a>. \u201cNot a lot of people are. But the Strickland fight?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cI faced Strickland. Strickland, in the striking, definitely beats Khamzat, for sure. Khamzat\u2019s a problem to deal with when he has you on your back. We\u2019ve seen that many times. But Strickland, what he does brilliantly \u2014 I took Strickland down, I think, seven times. The way he gets up \u2014 to hold him down is incredibly hard. At Xtreme Couture, where they train, they specialize in getting to their feet. And Strickland\u2019s a lot stronger than people might think. I think he has a very good chance in that fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Oddsmakers disagree. Chimaev opened as a sizable betting favorite over Strickland, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-odds\/428694\/khamzat-odds-ufc-328-lopsided-inaugural-bmf-champ-dumping-house-strickland\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">currently sits around -600<\/a>, implying an 85 percent chance of victory for \u201cBorz.\u201d But having spent 50 minutes in the cage with Strickland, du Plessis knows the former middleweight champion brings unique challenges that are hard to prepare for, and could put Chimaev on the back foot early.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cWhen you fight a guy like Strickland, you have one round where you are going to struggle, because you have to figure him out,\u201d du Plessis said. \u201cBecause he has an awkward style, and it looks wrong. It doesn\u2019t look very intimidating at all when you watch him fight, but when you\u2019re in there with him, he does things the way he does it, and he does it brilliantly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UFC 328 takes place May 9 at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dricus du Plessis says no one should count out Sean Strickland. Strickland is set to challenge UFC middleweight&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542303,"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-542302","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\/542302","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=542302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}