Daniel Cormier loves the bad blood between Dricus Du Plessis and Israel Adesanya
On Saturday night, the UFC returns to Perth, Australia with a loaded pay-per-view offering punctuated by a massive middleweight title clash. Du Plessis, the promotion’s reigning 185-pound king, will put his crown on the line for the first time against a man ready to claim it for a third time, Israel Adesanya.
It’s been more than a year since ‘DDP’ and Adesanya engaged in a racially charged face-off at UFC 290, but it’s clear that neither one’s disdain for the other has dwindled.
Discussing their upcoming title clash, Cormier suggested that ‘The Last Stylebender’ was smart to take the last year off after earning a reputation for being one of the most active champions in UFC history.
“I honestly don’t hate that he took some time off,” Cormier said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “They were riding this dude so hard. He was riding so hot, for so long.
“I remember right after he lost to Sean Strickland, I posted a picture of the amount of fights he had headlined. I thought to myself, this dude needs a break. It’s not bad that he took some time off. He was fighting a lot. Like, a lot. He was fighting a lot. I don’t know if anyone’s been as active” (h/t MMA Fighting).
Last summer, Adesanya and Du Plessis appeared to be on a collision course, but those plans were briefly derailed when Sean Strickland delivered a lights-out performance against the ‘Stylebender’ at UFC 293, taking the middleweight title with him back to Las Vegas.
In the aftermatch Adesanya opted to take some time off and reassess.
But when Du Plessis snatched the title away from Strickland just four months later, Adesanya knew it was time to start preparing for a comeback.
The heated rivalry between Du Plessis, who hails from South Africa, and Adesanya can be traced back to comments ‘Stillknocks’ made last year when he claimed that he would be the UFC’s first true African world champion. The comment rubbed Adesanya, who was born in Nigeria, the wrong way, leading to their heated exchange inside the Octagon last summer.
“He don’t want to lose to that dude,” Cormier said of Adesanya. “He don’t want to lose to Dricus. I love how intense it gets between these guys. I like bad blood fights. That’s my thing. I’m not going to lie to you, I love when it’s a bad blood fight, and this one has all the sh*t that I love. Those guys hate each other.”
Daniel Cormier says it’s up to Adesanya to prove he still has what it takes to compete
Though Adesanya is, in the eyes of many, the promotion’s greatest middleweight champion of all time, Du Plessis remains convinced that the former two-time titleholder’s best days are behind him.
Whether or not that’s true is entirely up to the 35-year-old ‘Stylebender’ as he looks to make history by becoming the first-ever three-time middleweight champion at UFC 305.
“I think Dricus is almost betting on him not being [the same guy he was before],” Cormier said. “He said it on Countdown. He said, ‘He’s a tremendous fighter but his light is dimming … his light is dimming if it isn’t completely out [already].’ F*cking Dricus du Plessis said that about Izzy.”
“It’s on Izzy to show that’s not the case. It’s [up to him to say], ‘I’m still here and I’m still the man.”