Dricus Du Plessis doesn’t plan to change his approach for UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland.
Du Plessis (20-2 MMA, 6-0 UFC) challenges Strickland (28-5 MMA, 15-5 UFC) for his title in the UFC 297 headliner Jan. 20 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
Du Plessis, a former EFC dual-champion, expects his experience in championship rounds to play a factor but vows he won’t be needing them.
“One thing that I think is going to shock a lot of people is the way I go at this,” Du Plessis said in an interview with My MMA News. “From the very first second of this fight, I’m going to go like I always do. The first opportunity I get, I will finish this fight. My honest prediction, there’s no way we’re going to championship rounds of this fight.”
Du Plessis has finished all but one of his 20 professional wins and plans on bringing the same intensity toward Strickland. Both Du Plessis and Strickland are coming off upset wins, with Du Plessis stopping ex-champ Robert Whittaker by TKO and Strickland dethroning Israel Adesanya to become champion.
“I think people know it’s going to be an entertaining fight,” Du Plessis said. “I’ve had great performances, and I’ve had not so good performances in my career, in the UFC and out the UFC. There’s fights where even though I won, I wasn’t happy with my performance, and there were (losses) where I performed great.
“But not one of those performances, good or bad, was not entertaining. I never had an unentertaining fight in my life, and with Sean Strickland, he’s had some fights where it wasn’t that entertaining. … But when you get me and you get Strickland, you get two guys that are not afraid to stand in there and bang. He doesn’t like to fight backwards, and I promise you I’m not fighting backwards.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 297.
