Dricus Du Plessis: the Punisher

If Dricus Du Plessis is so bad (and he is), then what does that say about all the guys he's beaten?

The young eat the old, and build a house of their bones. It’s a tale as old as combat sports, and at UFC 305 it received another recitation. This time the stage was the UFC’s middleweight division, a weight class ruled for years by Israel Adesanya and his crown prince Robert Whittaker; one heralded as the next incarnation of Anderson Silva, the other a sort of middleweight Joe Benavidez: the “if only” champ. Both have now been beaten, emphatically, by the new king of middleweight, Dricus Du Plessis.

It’s a familiar story, but this time it comes with a fascinating new wrinkle: Dricus Du Plessis actually sucks.

Now don’t balk, all you newly minted Dricus heads. You know it’s true, at least partially. I wrote about a few of Du Plessis’ more comical moments inside the Octagon last week, if you’re still in need of convincing, but I promise you’ll find plenty of material to consider below. The point is, Du Plessis is unquestionably the least technically sound fighter to wear a UFC belt since before the days of Chuck Liddell. His striking is absurd. His wrestling is a cruelly effective joke. Only in the grappling department does Du Plessis boast some reasonable technique, and even there he is liable to lean on muscle over skill.

This is why Du Plessis, in addition to being one of the funniest things to ever happen to MMA, is also one of the most important; because, while his form may be atrocious, the results speak for themselves. In just a few years, Du Plessis has laid bare the pretense of the sport, exposed the fact that all of these so-called technical fighters are not actually technical enough to punish the many, many openings he presents.

If Dricus Du Plessis is so bad (and he is), then what does that say about all the guys he’s beaten?

The Punisher

The irony of Du Plessis’ style is that while he makes about ten times as many mistakes as his opponents, he is ten times likelier to punish the mistakes they make against him. Faulty defensive footwork is the prime target, and one which led directly to Adesanya’s downfall at UFC 305.

Du Plessis attacks retreating fighters like a dog chasing a mail truck. When they insist on backing up on a straight line, he always catches them. To properly appreciate this, you have to see what happens when the opponent doesn’t retreat at all.

Actually, there’s another thing in this sequence I’d like to highlight first: the left high kick, which Du Plessis throws with surprising flexibility and no switch of the feet. If Dricus is Frankenstein’s monster, then the corpse that provided his left leg must have been one hell of a kickboxer in life, because that is the only limb on his body that seems to operate with any dexterity at all. I literally cannot explain this.

More to the point, however, look at how effectively Adesanya stymies Du Plessis’ blitz. Dricus follows that uncannily beautiful high kick with a ludicrous right hand, barreling forward as if fully expcting Adesanya to go leaping backward. Adesanya simply pulls and watches the punch whizz past his nose, at which point Du Plessis overthrows his next punch so much that he ends up headbutting Adesanya’s chest.

Now, a little pivot from Israel would have been even better here. On the rare occasions when an opponent has hit Du Plessis with a little lateral movement he tends to go flying completely past them, horribly off balance. By keeping his feet planted, Adesanya allows Du Plessis to transition into one of his clumsy, incidental takedown attempts—which are often surprisingly effective, as we’ll see a little later. Still, Adesanya easily avoids the worst of Du Plessis’ considerable punching power simply by standing his ground and letting Du Plessis overthrow.

Now, let’s see what happened when Adesanya lost his nerve and started to backpedal.