Could we see Du Plessis attempt to harness the style that Strickland used to blank Adesanya on the scorecards back at UFC 293?
Dricus Du Plessis has a lot of respect for how Sean Strickland defeated Israel Adesanya back in September 2023.
Du Plessis would end up taking the belt that Strickland took off Adesanya a few months later in January, but that fight made him realize just how well-prepared “Tarzan” had been to beat “The Last Stylebender.” He’s clearly been thinking a lot about this as he prepares to fight Izzy at UFC 305 on August 17th.
“I honestly thought, ‘[Strickland] won that fight, but that can’t happen again. Izzy is gonna beat him. Izzy will beat him,’” Dricus told the New York Post. “That was obviously before I actually fought Strickland. After fighting Strickland, my whole opinion around this changed because I went back to that fight and I said, ‘Wow.’”
“Izzy fought the way he always fights — staying on the outside, picking one shot. And Strickland’s game, after fighting Strickland’s team, you don’t just catch him with shots. His defense is too good. He’s too tricky to figure out defensively. You need to catch him with combos, big combos — you can’t just move backwards and think you’re gonna catch him with one shot. His defense is too smart for that. It’s too awkward. His whole posture, he’s the way he defends is, you know, it’s very unique to Sean Strickland.”
While Dricus Du Plessis recently said he feels like he beat Strickland soundly enough to forego a rematch, he did give Sean credit for his performance against Adesanya.
“It was Strickland who completely shut down Izzy’s game, and he enforced his game,” Du Plessis said. “And that style that Strickland fights was the kryptonite for a guy like like Adesanya because he couldn’t land those shots. And the constant pressure — when you let Strickland walk forward and have his rhythm fight … Adesanya is not a big quantity fighter. He’s a guy that moves, moves, moves, and then he throws his accurate strikes.”
“But those aren’t so accurate when you have someone with Sean Strickland’s defense. So that’s when I changed my opinion a little from ‘Izzy wasn’t on that night’ to ‘Maybe Strickland’s style was just a perfect antidote for Adesanya.’”
Could we end up seeing “Stillknocks” attempting to imitate Strickland a little bit on the feet? Du Plessis is not the kind of fighter that we can see shelling up and following a very specific gameplan for 25 minutes. He’s a brute and a bomb thrower, which in the past is exactly the kind of opponent Adesanya has been able to counter and take out.
Given that, perhaps he will step into the cage at UFC 305 with a little kryptonite in his back pocket, thanks to the lessons he learned from fighting and watching Sean Strickland.