Dricus du Plessis | Photo By Brendan Moran/Sportsfile via Getty Images
Dricus du Plessis and Israel Adesanya are finally going to settle their business.
This Saturday, du Plessis and Adesanya face off in the main event of UFC 305, for the undisputed middleweight title. When the bout was originally conceived, Adesanya was the middleweight champion and du Plessis was the challenger, with the two men arguing over their African heritage. But then Adesanya dropped the belt to Sean Strickland and the matchup was put on the back burner until this weekend. Now we finally get the long-awaited grudge match, so let’s discuss how each man can leave Perth, Australia as the middleweight champion.
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Paths to Victory for Dricus du Plessis at UFC 305
A former KSW welterweight champion, du Plessis joined the UFC in 2020 and immediately began making waves in the middleweight division with his particular brand of all-out offense. That is still the base of du Plessis’s style today: forward aggression that borders on recklessness at time. Like a middleweight Justin Gaethje.
Du Plessis is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades fighter, as comfortable engaging in a kickboxing match as he is with grappling, but the thing that straw that stirs the drink for him is his physicality. Though he’s a former welterweight, du Plessis is big for the weight class and a certified HOSS. Watch the way the man rag-dolled Robert Whittaker and you get a sense of someone with preternatural strength and power.
Against Adesanya, du Plessis needs to bring that power to bear.
Du Plessis hails from a kickboxing background, but he’s not some savant on the feet. He’s powerful, athletic, and has a high-level understanding of tactics, which makes him extremely dangerous, he won’t wow anyone with technical brilliance. Then again, neither did Yoel Romero and gave Adesanya all he could handle (honestly, du Plessis is a lot like Romero only with better kicks and worse defense).
On the feet, the best thing du Plessis can do is bring consistent pressure to Adesanya and keep his guard up. Adesanya is a low-volume counter striker, and you can simply out-work him by simply coming forward, like Strickland did. But to do so, du Plessis will have to wade into the fire. If he gets wild on the feet as he is sometimes wont to do, that puts him in significant danger. Defensive fundamentals and pressure is the key.
Once he establishes that, the way to turn the key and open the door is with his grappling. Adesanya is a very good defensive wrestler, but he can’t match du Plessis’s physicality in close. The way du Plessis wins this one is getting takedowns and consolidating position on the floor. When he did that against Robert Whittaker, it was curtains, and the same is true here.
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Paths to victory for Israel Adesanya at UFC 305
A former two-time middleweight champion, Adesanya has a chance to become only the second fighter in UFC history to win an undisputed title three times in the same weight class (joining Randy Couture). And if he’s going to do it, it will be the same way he’s won the first two: world-class kickboxing.
When Adesanya made the move to the UFC, the MMA world couldn’t wait to see how an elite Glory kickboxer would transition. It turns out, extremely well. Adesanya is a better MMA fighter than he was a kickboxer (which is saying something) to the point that he has a credible claim as the best striker in UFC history.
Everything for Adesanya starts with vision, distance, and timing. “The Last Stylebender” is capable of fighting a plethora of styles, but over the years he’s become more reliant on counter-striking which he excels at because his exceptional awareness. Adesanya has terrific footwork which allows him to keep things at a comfortable range where he can either set the tempo with kicks or pick off incoming strikes from the opponent and then get into a sequence of his own.
That’s exactly how he beats du Plessis.
At range and in space is where Adesanya shines and where du Plessis is most at risk. Sean Strickland gave du Plessis mountains of problems with a jab, teeps, and footwork. Adesanya is better at all of those and can do something very similar. Moreover, Strickland has never been a good counter fighter, whereas Adesanya has the power and skills to clock du Plessis when he steps in or gets lazy.
The concern for Adesanya will be keeping things upright and in space. Against Strickland, Adesanya got backed up almost at will, looking for the perfect counter instead of putting offense down range. Doing that against du Plessis is a terrible idea as it’s giving him the fight he wants. Adesanya needs to keep his back off the fence and stay out of clinches to win this battle. Fortunately, he’s proven very capable of that when he wants.
X-Factors
There’s no kind way to say this: Israel Adesanya is old. In sports in general and combat sports in particular, 35 years old is retirement age, and there is a very real possibility that Adesanya is on the way out and we just don’t know it yet. Especially when you consider the mileage.
Adesanya has been fighting since he was 18 years old. He has 32 amateur kickboxing fights, 80 pro bouts, 6 boxing bouts, and 27 MMA fights. That’s 145 fights! And That doesn’t include fights that randomly got left off his record, gym wars, street fights, etc… The human body is simply not built to endure that much. Eventually it breaks down, and we may well have seen that against Strickland.
People have sort of forgotten how bad that Strickland loss was for Adesanya because Strickland has established himself as one of the best fighters in the world after the fact, but it was truly jarring. On paper, that should have been Adesanya’s easiest fight in years and instead he got whooped. Full blown ass-kicking. And when you go back and watch it, it happened in a way that suggests Adesanya is old.
First, Strickland drops him in the first round. Credit to Adesanya who ate as clean of a punch as Strickland can deliver, and got up from it, but we never see Adesanya get lit up like that, especially not early in a fight.
Second, Adesanya sort of surrendered. Don’t get me wrong, he stuck in and continued fighting, but as the bout dragged on and he was clearly losing, Adesanya still couldn’t pull the trigger to turn things around. Even in the final moments of the fight when he was facing certain defeat, Strickland beckoned him on for a brawl and Adesanya didn’t have it in him. That’s concerning.
When Father Time comes for fighters, the first things that go are the chin and the trigger. Old fighters can’t take damage the same way and they start to hesitate with their own offense. Both of those were on display Adesanya’s last time out and it’s extremely concerning.
Prediction
On paper, this is an extremely good stylistic matchup. Or at least it was. 18 months ago, these two were perfect foils for one another. Now? I’m not so sure. As noted in the section above, it seems highly likely that Adesanya is no longer at his best. Is 80 percent of Adesanya good enough to beat du Plessis? That’s a tall order.
In his prime, Adesanya seems like he has a clear path to victory and the ability to execute it but if he’s not in his prime, he’s in trouble. Du Plessis is a smart enough fighter to give him problems at any point and now he has all the physical advantages too.
Dricus du Plessis def. Israel Adesanya via unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 49-46)
