He was careful not to overlook Chimaev’s wrestling, however. <\/p>\n
Khamzat is a problem to deal with when he has you on your back \u2014 we’ve seen that many times. But I think Strickland has a very good chance in that fight.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Du Plessis Questions Whether Chimaev Can Adapt<\/p>\n
Du Plessis expressed doubt that Chimaev can evolve his game the way a champion typically needs to over multiple defenses. <\/p>\n
I don’t think he has the ability to change,” Du Plessis said. “I don’t think he has the ability to become a striker or even just match any good striker. He doesn’t. I was in there with him striking \u2014 it’s not a fight.<\/p>\n
He added that Chimaev’s success against him came down to execution, not versatility. <\/p>\n
He implemented his game plan a lot better, and he won the fight fair and square. It wasn’t controversial. But he was better at 10% of this game than me \u2014 and now I know it, and I’ve been working on it.<\/p>\n
Du Plessis Still Wants the Rematch<\/p>\n
Du Plessis called Chimaev’s approach against him “a pretty cowardly game plan” and made clear he believes a second fight would go differently. <\/p>\n
The second time will be a way different result \u2014 I know that for a fact,” he said. “25 minutes is not a lot of time to adapt that quickly on the fly.<\/p>\n
He also acknowledged some ambivalence about a rematch being his next step.<\/p>\n
I know Khamzat and I kind of don’t want to fight each other \u2014 I’m not really excited for that fight. Not a lot of people are.<\/p>\n
Strickland, who earned his title shot with a knockout of Anthony Hernandez in February, faces Chimaev (15-0) when the champion makes his first title defense at UFC 328 on May 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dricus Du Plessis believes Sean Strickland has a genuine shot at dethroning Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 328 \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[54311,49,48,13003,11924,210558,641,11923,638,26361,7653,82,156057,9266],"class_list":["post-538765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-beats","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-champion","tag-chimaev","tag-definitely","tag-fighting","tag-khamzat","tag-mma","tag-plessis","tag-sean","tag-sports","tag-strickland","tag-striking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}