At UFC 312, Dricus Du Plessis shows that he is absolutely worthy of the Middleweight UFC championship. In the rematch against Sean Strickland, Dricus Du Plessis won the opponent in 5 rounds. Earlier, Strickland accused the referee fraud, causing him to lose his belt in 2024.
Before the victory of Strickland, Dricus Du Plessis also defeated the former Israeli Adesanya championship. He is having a record table at UFC, and shows that he is a very strong boxer in the Middleweight weight class. The last opponent he had not encountered was the “Northern European Wolf” Khamzat Chimaev.
According to the latest announcement of UFC, Khamzat Chimaev will agree to the belt competition with Dricus Du Plessis. The two boxers will face each other at UFC 319, the event scheduled to take place in August. This is also the focal match, the first announced of the UFC 319 event.
In the past, Khamzat Chimaev had attracted attention at the time of launching UFC. He accepted 3 consecutive matches in just 2 months, and all won. That is the time of 2020. But since then, Chimaev has health problems. He played quite little, on average 1 match per year.
The last time Chimaev played was in October 2024. He won against Robert Whittaker with a lock in the first half. But before that match, Chimaev had to withdraw from some predetermined matches, on the grounds that he had to be hospitalized for emergency because of the disease.