Dricus v Usman: It’s an early fight time on Sunday
· Citizen
The battle lines have been drawn, the weights have been made and the time for talking is over. South Africa’s former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis begins his road back to regaining his title when he takes on Nigeria’s Kamaru Usman in the main event of UFC Fight Night Oklahoma City in the early hours of Sunday morning (SA time).
It has been just under a year since DDP relinquished his title to Russia’s Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 319 in August last year.
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Both fighters this week made the middleweight weight limit of 186 pounds, with Du Plessis tipping the scales at 185.5 pounds and the Nigerian coming in at 186 pounds.
“I’m facing a great opponent in Kamaru Usman, but nothing he has ever been able to do in his career can prepare him for what is about to happen,” said the South African at the Ceremonial Weigh-in on Saturday morning.
Usman is a former UFC welterweight champion who defended that title multiple times, but a string of poor results in that division have forced him to take the step to middleweight.
“Usman has done all he can do at that welterweight division, and although he was a great champion, the only thing he could do to cement his legacy was to go up a weight class in the hopes of becoming a double (division) champion,” DDP told the UFC’s Megan Olivi after the weigh-in.
Du Plessis took almost a year off from the Octagon after Chimaev exposed some massive holes in his wrestling game.
“For me, I have the opportunity to beat one of the best wrestlers the UFC has ever seen,” added Du Plessis.
“This fight is important to me. I could have pushed for a fight with a striker, but I have beaten all the strikers. This fight will prove I have fixed the mistakes from my last fight.”
Predicting the start time of this fight is always a bit of a lottery with four three-minute fights preceding the main event.
If those fights all go the distance then the Du Plessis fight will most likely start close to 5am SA time. So to not miss a second of the action, tune into SuperSport from about 4am just to be safe.