Dricus du Plessis

The South African middleweight champion

Dricus "Stillknocks" du Plessis won the UFC middleweight title at UFC 297 in January 2024 by split decision over Sean Strickland. He has defended the title three times — against Israel Adesanya (UFC 305, August 2024, submission round 4), Sean Strickland (UFC 312, February 2025, unanimous decision), and the matchup with Khamzat Chimaev. His record stands at 23-2.

His résumé includes wins over Darren Till (UFC 282, 2022), Robert Whittaker (UFC 290, 2023), Sean Strickland (twice), and Israel Adesanya. The only losses are early-career bouts before his UFC tenure.

The unorthodox style

DDP's fighting style is the most stylistically unique of any current UFC champion. The signature traits:

• Wide hooks and overhands: punches thrown from below the waist or from completely unorthodox angles. Critics call it "ugly"; the result is opponents who can't read the offensive timing.
• Side-step entries: angles into combinations that don't follow the textbook step-and-pivot patterns. The Whittaker fight at UFC 290 was a clinic in this.
• Improvised wrestling: takedowns that look unbalanced and chaotic but produce position. The Adesanya submission at UFC 305 came from a scramble that looked accidental until the rear-naked choke set up.
• Pace and pressure: the most consistent forward-walking middleweight in the division. DDP doesn't fight backwards.

The style produces the upsides (no opponent can effectively game-plan him) and the downsides (his defense looks porous, particularly against fundamental strikers who keep distance).

The Adesanya submission

The UFC 305 title defense against Israel Adesanya in August 2024 was the most violent middleweight title bout since the Adesanya-Pereira UFC 281. DDP and Adesanya traded heavy strikes for three rounds — both fighters hurt multiple times — before DDP took Adesanya down in round 4 and locked on a rear-naked choke from back control. The submission at 3:38 of round 4 ended the bout and silenced critics who said DDP couldn't beat the previous champion.

The technical story of the win: DDP's takedowns shocked Adesanya — the previous-champion era at middleweight had been defined by Adesanya's takedown defense, but DDP's improvised wrestling produced clean entries that bypassed Adesanya's standard defensive responses.

The Whittaker bout

The July 2023 UFC 290 win over Robert Whittaker was DDP's title-eliminator bout. Whittaker was the consensus #2 middleweight; DDP won by TKO in round 2 after a sequence of strikes that broke through Whittaker's defensive frame. The result eliminated the previous-champion-era contender pool and set up the Strickland title shot six months later.

The South African MMA presence

DDP is the most successful South African MMA fighter in history. He won EFC welterweight and middleweight titles before his UFC signing and built his career through smaller regional promotions in South Africa and Europe (KSW in Poland) before reaching the UFC in 2020. The trajectory is unusual — most UFC champions come through the American or Brazilian gym systems, not African regional promotions.

His training base at CIT Performance Institute in Johannesburg (and the recent partnership with American gyms for camp work) has been the foundation of his post-2022 ascent.

The championship defenses

The three title defenses through early 2025 — Adesanya, Strickland (rematch), Khamzat Chimaev — produced varied technical demonstrations:

• vs Adesanya (UFC 305): KO threat from striking, submission finish from wrestling-into-back-control.
• vs Strickland (UFC 312): high-output striking decision over a defensive specialist.
• vs Chimaev: the unbeaten Chechen wrestler's championship-level test.

The depth of the title-defense résumé through 2025 is the strongest case for DDP's claim to current top-pound-for-pound consideration alongside Islam Makhachev and Alex Pereira.

The legacy projection

DDP is 31 years old as of mid-2025 — a relatively young champion by middleweight standards. The competitive window remaining could be 5-7 years if his unorthodox style continues to produce title-defense success.

The matchmaking path includes Khamzat Chimaev, the next-wave middleweight contenders (Reinier de Ridder, Caio Borralho), and potential cross-divisional moves up to light heavyweight. If his title reign extends past 2027, DDP's combination of stylistic anomaly, finishing capability, and the depth of his title-defense bracket positions him as the most consequential middleweight champion since Anderson Silva.