{"id":814623,"date":"2026-07-21T15:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T15:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814623\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T15:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T15:36:09","slug":"dricus-du-plessis-coach-reveals-bizarre-gameplan-for-ufc-okc-shoots-down-nonsense-claims-of-kamaru-usman-fouls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814623\/","title":{"rendered":"Dricus Du Plessis coach reveals bizarre gameplan for UFC OKC, shoots down \u2018nonsense\u2019 claims of Kamaru Usman fouls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the fight, Usman suggested an errant thumb to the eye may have contributed to his inability to get out of first gear. It also didn\u2019t help that Du Plessis was a \u201cbig boy\u201d with \u201cweird, rangy shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t get going,\u201d Usman said in the post-fight press conference<\/a>. \u201cHe was big, he was strong, he was rangy. So, it was a little tough to get going. I took kind of a thumb-punch in the eye early on, and that kind of blurred the vision a bit. But no excuses. It is what it is. I was pretty compromised. Like I said, he\u2019s a big boy, and when you start seeing two of the big boys, and he\u2019s got kind of a weird, rangy shots. So it\u2019s a little delayed to get out of the way of those shots, seeing them. But no excuses. It\u2019s tough to be on this side. I\u2019m not used to being on this side. So yeah, it kind of sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gameplan was 100 percent to completely stay composed and that\u2019s what he did,\u201d Visser told Submission Radio<\/a>. \u201cObviously, he listens very well to me, so I\u2019ve never, ever pushed him through the whole fight to push for the finish. I saw that Kamaru does recover very quickly after getting hit that hard and punched that hard in the face. I mean, he was out a couple of times on his feet, but I shouted very loudly to Dricus to stay composed and pick the shots, because a guy who recovers that quickly is dangerous, he\u2019s desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am super, super happy with our results,\u201d Visser continued. \u201cI think this is the best I\u2019ve seen Dricus ever. This was a high pressure fight. I mean, this was our comeback fight after 10, 11 months off. So, I\u2019m very happy. And he listened, we never pushed for anything. We never pushed once for the finish, not even once. I mean, you saw Kamaru complaining about a low blow and the thumb or the finger, all nonsense, because we could have finished him there, but he was just not pushing. He was just respectful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the fight, Usman suggested an errant thumb to the eye may have contributed to his inability to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396,179146,6656],"class_list":["post-814623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-on-paramount","tag-ufc-results"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814623","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=814623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}