Dricus Du Plessis stands by his decision not to fight at UFC 300.
Middleweight champion Du Plessis (21-2 MMA, 7-0 UFC) was called by the UFC to defend his title against Israel Adesanya (24-3 MMA, 13-3 UFC) on the historic card April 13 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
He turned it down.
Du Plessis was recovering from a broken foot suffered in his title win over Sean Strickland less than three months before that at UFC 297, and wasn’t going to risk fighting compromised.
“I won’t say numbers just because I don’t like it, but I don’t think people understand the amount of money they offered me to fight at UFC 300,” Du Plessis told Fight Wave. “You don’t understand the bitter pill it was to say no to that fight. I had a broken foot. What do you guys want? The fight was eight weeks after.”
Du Plessis referenced former featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski’s bold move of stepping in on just 10 days’ notice to rematch lightweight champion Islam Makhachev at UFC 294. He was knocked out in Round 1, then lost his featherweight title to Ilia Topuria also by knockout at UFC 298.
“This is your career, you have to be smart about it,” Du Plessis said. “Look at Alex Volkanovski. …As a champion stepping in on a week’s notice. That is so bad ass, but what happened? What favors did that do him? Yeah, he got money. That’s not why I do this.
“He got money, but he got knocked out because obviously he didn’t have time to prepare for that fight. Do you think that anybody went, ‘Oh, but he took it on short notice?’ No, everybody went, ‘he got knocked out.’ He still got knocked out, still has that loss then lost his title.”
