Issue 207

July 2024

E. Spencer Kyte dives into the extraordinary journey of Dricus Du Plessis, whose relentless determination and patriotic pride have propelled him to the pinnacle of MMA, poised for his greatest challenge yet.

When Dricus Du Plessis first walked through the doors at Team CIT, coach Morne Visser wanted no part of the high school student with MMA ambitions. It wasn’t anything personal, but simply that the highly respected trainer and South African combat sports luminary wasn’t in the business of training amateur fighters.

“When Dricus joined me, he was still in school,” begins Visser, the usually interview-averse headman of the elite team from Hatfield, Pretoria, South Africa. “His dad drove him through a couple of times. I do not coach amateurs — my fighters coach the amateurs. They copy and paste what I do for them for the amateur fighters. We’ve got a really decent program where you’ve got to become an amateur champion, and then I’ll allow you to train with the pros for three months to see if you’re cut for the real thing.”

Visser, who operated the professional side of K-1 kickboxing in South Africa, running shows and forging world champions, wasn’t in the habit of expending any of his time on teenage dreamers. 

“I was training with my pro fighters, and Dricus asked me what he must do,” he says, a grin creeping across his face. “I said to him, ‘Just go on the bag, stand in front of it, and slap it. I just wanted to get rid of the kid. “Slap it’ doesn’t exist.”

What the coach didn’t expect was how Du Plessis would respond.

“He did that for like two weeks,” Visser continues, shaking his head. “He came back every day. I said to him, ‘Stand in front of the bag and slap it’ while I was giving training.”

To the hungry Du Plessis, the opportunity to be in the same gym as some of his combat sports heroes was thrilling. The way he saw it, this must have been how everyone started. Du Plessis remembers this Miyagi-like task well. 

“They were a pro-only gym with no new members back then,” explains Du Plessis. So, when I walk in there, I go, ‘Okay, they have my favorite fighters’ — Michiel Opperman, Leon Mynhardt; they were the guys in South Africa that I looked up to — and I see them on the training mat, so coach says, ‘Go over there and slap the bag, and I go, ‘Okay, perfect.’ Coming in there as a K-1 national champion, I go, ‘This is what you need to do.’ It was a crazy start to everything, but here we are today.”

The bag slapping continued until one Friday afternoon when Visser was short a sparring partner for one of the professional fighters. He asked the Du Plessis if he wanted to sub in, and he got his ass handed to him. Just as Visser didn’t expect the high schooler to happily slap a bag for weeks on end. He also didn’t expect the hard-charging youngster to bounce back up to his feet so quickly, either.

“He got dropped, but he got up so quickly I thought, ‘Not bad for a youngster,’” says the hard-to-impress head coach, who has been by Du Plessis’ side ever since. “He was literally 17 years old, 18 years old — he stood up and went at these big guys, pro K-1 fighters, and he was an amateur kickboxer, K-1 fighter. To stand up with those guys, I thought there was really something in him, so we decided to pull him into the team.”

Although Visser was impressed, the pros in the room were not. Visser estimates that they actively sought to beat the holy hell out of Du Plessis for over a year. Their motives were officially unknown, but likely a combination of territorial, macho bullshit mixed with a little bit of jealousy that the kid that was very recently standing on his own, slapping a heavy bag, had captured their coach’s attention. Each time they knocked Du Plessis back or down, the tenacious kid came right back at them, giving Visser his first true signal that he might have a bright future in this sport.

“For me, it’s simple: if you are willing to get into a cage with no knowledge, nothing, no background, and willing to kill the guy in front of you, you are 50 percent there,” Visser says without flinching. “The other 50 percent I had, I could teach, but you’ve got to have that pig in you.”

EARNING HIS STRIPES

As much as Du Plessis had caught his coach’s eye, the Team CIT program dictated that the pro fighters coached the amateurs. Du Plessis became responsible for a 13-year-old kid who came to the gym. 

“I was part of a very small kickboxing gym here in Pretoria, very close to where I was going to school, so after school, I would jog to the gym, do training, and my mom would pick me up in the evenings,” says UFC bantamweight Cameron Saaiman, the former 13-year-old kid. “A lady that was sponsoring me, helping me with training gear, covering fees for competitions, she said their business was looking to sponsor a bigger team, a professional team, and that was Team CIT. At that stage, my kickboxing gym was closing down, and I had nowhere to go, and they said, ‘Would you like to join them? We are working with them?’ Almost as part of that deal, Dricus was like, ‘Now I need to teach this kid.’ I think coach told Dricus, ‘You need to keep the sponsor happy, and the only person the lady cares about is this little kid, so you need to teach him.’ That’s honestly how it started.”

In addition to his responsibilities with Saaiman, Du Plessis was still making headway in his career. After he’d won his first four fights under the Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC) banner, Visser wanted to test Du Plessis and got him his first championship opportunity. This came as a middleweight title bout at EFC 33 against Garreth McLellan.

“Garreth was the EFC champion, a veteran in the sport,” recalls Visser. “At that stage, I think he was the biggest name in MMA in South Africa. We fought him, and Dricus never tapped out. Dricus fought him. It was his third fight. He was so young, against a guy that was at least 10 years his senior, and Dricus refused to tap. He was choked out with very little knowledge of what to do on the ground. We were stand-up fighters. That day, when he got choked out, he stood up, and he wanted to go again. I knew, ‘Shoot, we’ve got something special here.’”

Visser may have been convinced of his charge’s potential, but it took a while for the rest of the MMA world to catch on. Following the loss to McLellan, who was drafted to the UFC following the victory, Du Plessis embarked on an eight-fight win streak, collecting the EFC welterweight and middleweight titles before venturing to Poland and adding the KSW welterweight strap to his collection. 

UFC? NOT YET

To Du Plessis, it felt like enough for him to get a UFC call-up. The phone never rang. Six months after beating Soldic in Poland, Du Plessis lost the rematch in London. He questioned whether the dream he was chasing would ever come true.

“If you’re fighting in a league in America, you’re American, and you’re 5-0, 6-0 fighting in — let’s say LFA,” begins Du Plessis. “You’re probably getting your shot. I had three belts — double-weight division in EFC and (welterweight) in KSW — on an eight-fight win streak, and I still didn’t get my shot.”

His current success still hasn’t fully healed the wound, but the scar has become a point of pride for Du Plessis. 

“I lose a fight, my first loss in three or four years, and I think to myself, ‘What am I gonna do now? I don’t have the time to build up my record. I’m 25 years old. By the time I build up this record again, I’m 30, 31 — this isn’t going according to plan.’”

To this day, Visser feels responsible for the setback.

“I made Dricus cut to welterweight, and I mean, it was so tough for him,” he says. “We literally starved the guy, and he knocked the champion out — he’s a famous guy in Europe, Roberto Soldic — and then they wanted a rematch. I actually said after that first fight to Dricus, ‘We cannot do this cut anymore. I can see how much you’re suffering and how much weight you’re picking up as water after the fight. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t think it’s something sustainable. We decided to take the fight, he lost in the third round, but purely because of the cut. I decided then it was the last welterweight fight he would fight out of my gym. It took us one year. Dricus took a middleweight fight at KSW. He beat the guy, but it took us a full year to get his power. You need your power at light heavyweight power in order to be strong at middleweight, and it took us one year to get the power up.”

OPPORTUNITY AND COINCIDENCE KNOCKS

After winning on his return to KSW’s middleweight, Du Plessis returned to South Africa and defended his EFC middleweight title with a first-round submission on December 14, 2019. Three months later, the pandemic brought everything to a standstill. With COVID-19 sidelining fighters on the regular, short-notice opportunities were available for hopefuls with valid passports and a clean bill of health. Five months into the pandemic, Du Plessis’ opportunity finally materialized. After Rodolfo Vieira was forced out of his fight with Markus Perez due to injury, the South African replaced him. Midway through the opening round, Du Plessis connected with a short left hand. Perez fell to the ground, out cold the instant the shot landed, and “Stillknocks” had earned his first UFC victory. The win didn’t resonate with the audience because the October 11 event featured Joaquin Buckley’s jumping, spinning back kick knockout of Impa Kasanganay that went viral. 

The opening three bouts of the main card featured the short-notice promotional debuts of Ilia Topuria and Du Plessis on either side of the sophomore appearance of British heavyweight Tom Aspinall. Less than four years later, all three men were champions in their respective divisions.

“How exciting is that?” asks Visser excitedly. “Can you believe it? All three guys are willing to go out there and go for the kill. All three champions now.”

For Du Plessis, the short-notice opportunity aligned with how his career had traditionally gone. 

“I think that is part of being an exceptional athlete, an exceptional human is going ‘The only thing I have control over is how I perform, the work I put in, and what I’m doing,’” says Du Plessis. “I couldn’t ever go and say, ‘It’s his fault, or I need this’ because as soon as you put your trust in something or someone else, that’s where the problem comes in. I’m a Christian, and I always believe in God’s plan for me. It’s always worked out. He’s seen the hard work, and that’s where that belief comes from is my hard work, my faith, and the people who believed in me. I’ve never stopped believing that I will make it.”

FALLING INTO PLACE

Vieira’s withdrawal didn’t just create an opportunity for Du Plessis. It also gave Saaiman his first exposure to UFC Fight Week. The young padawan was the only individual with a valid passport who could accompany Du Plessis and Visser to Fight Island.

“Everyone heavier than 70 kilograms didn’t have a valid passport,” recalls Saaiman, the ever-present smile on his face. “That was in the heart of COVID, so we had to do 13 COVID tests before we flew out to Abu Dhabi, to Fight Island, and again, it’s just how the stars aligned where this guy that walks around at about 66 kilos, ‘Congratulations, for the next two weeks, you’re gonna be a punching bag.’”

"Just before he’s walking out — he walks out to ‘Live It Up’ by Airbourne — and just before he’s walking out, in the background music, it’s my walkout music, ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’” continues the DWCS alum, who should be back in action later in the year. “Now I’m standing there, he starts laughing because he knows it’s my walkout song, and I start trying to visualize myself being here one day because I can hear my song, and then it switches to ‘Live It Up,’ and he’s walking out. It was amazing to put myself in that position, even with no crowd. Afterwards, coach asked me, ‘Did you see Dana?’ and I said, ‘No!’ because I was mostly starring at the back of Dricus’ head because I was so focused on what was happening in the moment.”

Amidst the excitement, a deal was struck between coach and competitor.

“A long, long time ago, I wanted to retire out of the sport,” begins Visser. “It’s a huge investment of serious time and commitment. There are no weekends, no holidays for me. Everything gets planned around fighters. The team grew so big, and I wanted to retire. When he became the double EFC champion and we got the invite to KSW, I said to him, ‘This is my last one.’ We did the KSW first fight, and he said to me after the Soldic loss, he begged me for one more. I said, ‘We’ve got to do it my way,’ and then we went to middleweight. Then, right after that, we got the call for UFC, so I said, ‘Okay, we’ll do a camp for the UFC.’ After the first fight in the UFC, my promise was that ‘I will not stop until you are the UFC champion.’”

THE MARCH TO THE TOP

Du Plessis rattled off four more victories over the next 29 months, culminating in a second-round win over Top 10 mainstay Derek Brunson. The win established the South African as a contender. Stopping Perez and Trevin Giles were solid introductory efforts, and getting the better of Brad Tavares on the scorecards was a sign that the relative newcomer was more than just another run-of-the-mill middleweight. Tavares may never have worked into title contention. Still, there are few stalwarts as respected as the Las Vegas-based Hawaiian, and Du Plessis handled himself expertly against him. Du Plessis continued to add to his list of vanquished opponents, but none were stationed high enough in the rankings to earn a championship opportunity. At middleweight, only one guy holds that distinction: Robert John Whittaker.

“He beats Derek Brunson, and we’re like, ‘This is getting insane,’” says Saaiman, recalling the steady ascent of his teammate and mentor. “Then he came into the gym, and he was like, ‘I’m fighting Robert Whittaker. I’m fighting Bobby Knuckles. We’re finishing Bobby Knuckles.’ “I still remember the first day of that fight camp, Coach comes in, all warmed up, he stops the whole class from doing drills and stuff, and he said, ‘You’re finishing him from southpaw.’”

Saaiman isn’t misremembering things because Visser recalls the same interaction.

“Just to tell you about the Whittaker fight,” begins the Team CIT headman. “When we started the fight camp for Rob — Dricus is a natural orthodox fighter, but we do switch. For Rob’s fight, on the first day of fight camp, I told Dricus, ‘We will only fight Rob at southpaw, and he’s going to walk onto your punches; his blitzes will not work. That’s the way we knock him out.’”

Whittaker was, and still is, the guy you must beat to merit a championship opportunity in the UFC’s 185-pound weight division.

THE BIG ONE

Heading into their clash at UFC 290, Whittaker was undefeated against everyone in the division not named Israel Adesanya. Although he was 0-2 against the man who had reclaimed the throne two months earlier at UFC 287, Whittaker had a much better performance the second time he fought Adesanya. Bookmakers installed Whittaker as the favorite, but Du Plessis was unbothered. Instead, he executed the game plan Coach Visser set out perfectly and collected a second-round stoppage to establish himself as the No. 1 contender in the middleweight division.

“It’s just following that template of ‘I trust you, I trust my training, I trust my conditioning,’” begins Saaiman, touching on the mindset in the room throughout preparations. “‘We’re gonna change a couple of things that we learned in the Brunson fight, I’m gonna better that performance, and we’re gonna finish Robert Whittaker,’ and that’s exactly what happened.”

When it did, Adesanya went from sitting in the front row to standing nose-to-nose with Du Plessis, engaging in a back-and-forth battle of words that got ugly.

“Dricus never, ever ran any one of the African fighters down, fighting in the UFC or being champions,” says Visser. “That’s just Izzy’s issue that he’s got, and he’s using that to try to convince himself and the other guys that that is what we’ve said and that Dricus is a bad guy. He’s out of his mind. We purely said, ‘We were, and we are the first UFC champions out of Africa.’ Dricus lives here. He wakes up here every day; it’s just that.”

In one fight, Du Plessis went from underdog to title challenger. When the UFC booked Du Plessis to headline the September event targeted for Sydney, Du Plessis couldn’t make the date after suffering a foot injury ahead of his fight with Whittaker. Sean Strickland was the next man up and took the belt from Adesanya. 

“The injury happened 18 days before the Whittaker fight; it was literally my last hard session,” recalls Du Plessis. “I got the injury, we did medicals, but we were so close to the fight that I was already fit, I was ready to fight. Took the Whittaker fight, and I beat Robert Whittaker, who had proven to be the greatest and toughest middleweight at the time other than Adesanya. You can say, ‘Strickland beat Adesanya,’ but that doesn’t mean he beats Whittaker. Adesanya, at that time, was the king, and Whittaker — nobody could get past him, and he made it look easy every time. For me, I knew I made the right choice because I’m awful fighting injured. I’m not going to start my camp completely injured.” 

I thought they might throw another contender in there. I honestly thought that was what was going to happen — they’re going to make me fight again for the No. 1 contender spot. That was the risk of not taking the Adesanya fight, but if that was the risk of not starting that camp injured, I made the right choice because I just beat Robert Whittaker in spectacular fashion. I know I can beat Adesanya as the champion, and so what? Let them give me another contender. Let them give me another contender fight, and I’ll fight it.”

Instead of another contender, the UFC called with the opportunity to face Strickland for the title at UFC 297 in Toronto. On January 20, 2024, at Air Canada Centre, Du Plessis edged out Strickland on the scorecards, registering a split decision victory to become the new UFC middleweight champion.

A PROMISE FULFILLED AND AN IMMEASURABLE IMPACT

“I’m actually in retirement mode at this stage, but I’ve also made the same promise to Cameron,” Visser says, addressing that he’s continued despite having delivered Du Plessis to the top of the middleweight division as promised. “So, watch the space: I will not stop until Cameron is the UFC champion.”

The coach isn’t the only one to make good on a promise. Throughout his career, Du Plessis pledged to himself that he would win the middleweight title by the time he was 30. Officially, he missed the mark by six days, though he’s quick to offer a different outlook on the situation.

“We’re still in a discussion,” laughs the champion. “Coach said, ‘by 30,’ and I’m still 30. I wanted to do it before I was 30, but we said, ‘By 30,’ and at the age of 30, I’ve got it. It’s a six-day miss. But for 10 years of planning, six days isn’t anything.”

The fact that Du Plessis accomplished this feat is a momentous achievement, speaking about what it would mean to him to become the first UFC champion born, raised, and residing on the African continent.

“I’m someone chasing records, and I’ve set many of them,” Du Plessis begins when asked about his championship victory. “I was the first EFC double division champion. I was the youngest EFC champion at a stage. All those things were records. Becoming the first-ever South African UFC champion and the first-ever residing UFC African champion. Those things are all on the record books. If they weren’t true, they wouldn’t be in the record books. Why it’s so important to me is because I was on this long, extensive winning streak, and I didn’t get a shot, understandably so, but never deviating from the plan with my team here, with the struggles we’ve had, with the late start — and it’s a late start in MMA.” 

“I understand it would be better in terms of coaching, training (abroad) in most coaches. But I always believed in my training, I always believed in what we have to offer, and doing it out of South Africa, and out of Africa, with all its challenges, means that I can inspire every single South African. Every single African can realize that if you don’t have the opportunity to go, you can still make it, and that’s a big thing for me. South Africa is an amazing place. I wouldn’t live anywhere else, but when it comes to MMA, it’s very far behind the rest of the world — it used to be, but it’s not anymore.” 

“Call it patriotism if you want,” he continues. “I’ve always said there is nothing wrong with leaving, but if you’ve left, you haven’t achieved the same thing that I did, which doesn’t take away from your achievement; it’s just a different achievement. That was my motivation. Call me a Mama’s boy if you want. I just don’t want to leave home. I love my people, I love my country, and even now that I have the choice to move anywhere in the world, I still won’t because I have my team here, and we’ve done it.

“My coach made me that promise that he would get me to the UFC and make me UFC champion. He always said it, and I always believed it. It’s all those things combined that makes me so proud of my achievement.

These comments have caused pushback, but he’s happy to address the haters. 

“I’ll never let it get to me — the people trying to say whatever I said, I don’t care,” he adds. “I know what it means to me, and anybody with half a brain knows what I said. I did what I set out to do and I was the first residing African champion in the UFC, and that to me was a massive achievement.”

AN AFRICAN FIRST

It’s easy to not fully comprehend what a titanic achievement winning the middleweight title is for Du Plessis because South Africa is one of those countries most people have had limited exposure to. He and Saaiman are the third and fourth fighters from the nation to compete in the UFC, following heavyweight Ruan Potts and the aforementioned McLellan. While the country is sports-mad, as Visser puts it, the resources, infrastructure, and amount of people pursuing the sport at a professional level pale compared to many countries. 

“You’ve got to realize that we’ve got nothing like they’ve got in the U.S.A. — nothing — in regards to the sport,” says Visser. “We’ve got to get by and make do with what we’ve got. And just to become a UFC world champion out of a little gym in Hatfield, Pretoria, is already enormous; it’s already a massive achievement.”

For Saaiman, his teammate’s rise and its repercussions throughout their home nation are doubly powerful. 

“As the second class, I told him my only goal was to fight once professionally, he said, ‘No, you’re gonna do much more than that,’” says the 23-year-old bantamweight, recalling the day his outlook on the sport changed as a result of Du Plessis’ confidence in him. “I will never forget that day. I still remember the paint on the walls. It was such a dodgy gym. I still remember everything, and from that day, the single-mindedness, the shift happened. I did well at school because I had to because I knew if I didn’t, my parents would take combat sports away from me. Seeing how he progressed at such a young age gave me that hope. I have this discussion with a lot of friends a lot of times. You go into this community of guys that are super-loyal look after each other, and it’s literally blood, sweat, and tears on a weekly basis. Now you have these guys that believe more in you than you believe in yourself, and there is so much power in that.

“This is only the start,” Saaiman adds excitedly, clearly amped for the future. “Him bringing me along — you have to see the savages that train at Team CIT. We’ve only scrapped the surface of the amount of talent that we have in South Africa and, especially at Team CIT. And again, that comes down from the top guy himself, coach Morne Visser, and that gets talked about a lot. If we stick our necks out for one another in a closed gym, in private, pro sessions that no one is allowed to watch, but outside of that, if we’re achieving success, we’re going to bring guys with us, because we’re not only fighting for ourselves, we’re fighting for our team and our country.”

A SHOWDOWN IN PERTH

A little over a year after their squabbling following UFC 290, Du Plessis and Adesanya will finally face off, with the UFC Middleweight title hanging in the balance. The roles have been reversed, and the tensions have cooled; at least they have for Du Plessis, whose focus remains on making history.

“That’s once again one for the record books: two African fighters, headlining a fight, fighting for a UFC title,” he says when asked about the historic pairing with Adesanya. “That’s a first and to be a part of it is incredible. Once again, it makes me extremely proud, and it’s part of one of the boxes I will tick as an achievement. That’s the first thing I said when the press conference started, that it’s amazing for me. An honor for me, regardless of what me and Israel think of each other on a personal level. I have immense respect for him, and anybody that doesn’t is an idiot. He’s achieved amazing things.”

Following Adesanya’s loss to Strickland, the South African was critical of the vanquished champion’s performance, suggesting Adesanya looked different than he had in previous fights. Having spent 25 minutes inside the Octagon against Strickland, Du Plessis is ready to amend his earlier statements.

“The Izzy we saw there was definitely not the Izzy we’ve seen in the past,” begins the middleweight titleholder. “That being said, I said that before the Strickland fight, and since I was in there with Strickland, it changed my perception of that fight a little. Yes, there was definitely a difference in Izzy’s demeanor. I’ve studied this man. I know everything about him when it comes to how he approaches a fight — but once I shared the Octagon with Sean Strickland, I realized that maybe it wasn’t that Izzy couldn’t go out there and fight; it was Strickland shutting down his game.” 

“Izzy’s biggest weapon, in my opinion, is his ability to read a fight, stay on the outside, and snipe, not throwing crazy volume, but landing to the target. When you fight Strickland — I have a crazy-high striking rate, and when I fought Strickland, the first two rounds, my striking rate was half what I would usually land, and it was extremely hard to hit him; that’s a fact.” 

“He dictated the pace) with Izzy, and Izzy could catch him with that one strike, which he usually does. That changed my perspective and now I’m willing to go back on saying that was a bad night for Izzy. Yes, something was different in Izzy, in his demeanor, but fighting Strickland was a bad matchup.”

FRESH PERSPECTIVES

While Du Plessis is willing to change his assessment of the Adesanya Strickland fight, his impression of where Adesanya is at in his career has changed as well. The two shared the stage at a press event in Perth last month. While Adesanya jawed at Du Plessis when the two were faced off, the South African was largely relaxed. 

“Even before my being in the UFC, he was the guy,” explains Du Plessis. “So, I was looking at him as ‘this is the guy I need to beat in order to be the best in the world,’ and then seeing him now, there is 100 percent a change,” he says of the City Kickboxing man. “I’m not bashing on him at all for these changes. He turned 35 years old. He’s achieved everything that he’s going to achieve in the sport. He beat his arch-nemesis that followed him from kickboxing, to MMA, was 3-0 and then he beat him. There was nothing left for him, and then he lost to Sean Strickland; that’s what you call the end of a chapter or the end of a story.”

“And that’s what I was saying about him talking about golf, talking about peace, talking about how he enjoys life,” continues Du Plessis. “Unfortunately, in this game, it’s chaos. You see my fights, and when I get in that Octagon, it’s complete chaos, and that’s what I intend to bring. There is no place for peace. I understand that you’ve made it. You have all the money that you wanted. Your family is sorted, and I’m really happy for him. I wish that for every single martial artist. But when it comes to fighting ’til death, that makes your decision to die for that win a little harder, and when I get in there, I’m in route for that ultimate goal, which he’s achieved, in my opinion. If peace is what you enjoy, you will not enjoy being in the Octagon with me because I only bring chaos.”

THE COACH’S PERSPECTIVE

According to Visser, we haven’t seen the best version of his charge in the UFC yet, either.

“I promise you; you’ve seen a glimpse of his genuine style and how he’s supposed to move — light on his feet — how he’s supposed to wrestle,” says his coach, shaking his head. “I’ve always said, ‘If I can get 80 percent of the guy in the gym in the cage, in front of thousands of people, millions of people, I’ve done my job.’

“You guys have only seen maybe 60 percent of how good Dricus actually is. He’s actually super-light on his feet, super-fast with his hands. He just — when he gets hit — he just wants to go for the kill. Everybody thinks, ‘This guy isn’t going to go far because of his style,’ but I promise you: watch the next fight and all the fights after that. We need a big name like Izzy to win and to get Dricus to really believe and go into the flow stage. I hope we’re gonna prove much of it in this fight.”

Thanks to a little fortuitous timing, UFC 305 will occur the day after South Africa’s top-ranked national rugby side, the Springboks takes on Australia in Australia.

“I am a hundred percent sure that 80 percent of the rugby fans will be at that event,” says Visser, already buoyed by the thought of having myriad loyal supporters in the building at RAC Arena for Du Plessis’ first title defense. “It’s going to be exactly the same as the Springboks playing. We will have that same crowd in the arena.” 

“The Springboks are superheroes in the eyes of a lot of people and myself,” says Du Plessis. “I’ve watched so many Springbok games live, and now I have a lot of friends on the Springboks team. Seeing their success motivated me. Them becoming back-to-back world champions, and now I’m becoming a world champion, seeing how the country just united and elevated from that, and now, for the first time ever, having them at my fight. Having them watch me perform, that in itself is a dream come true and it means the world. This is going to be a massive weekend for South Africa.”

You can bet Du Plessis will once again do his damnedest to bring home another victory.

“If you think fighting for my first world title was my biggest fight or my biggest achievement, this one triples that. This is the biggest fight of my life, and when I go out there, I’m either going to win or die trying, and that’s truly how I feel. To bring this win home, I’m not going to say it’s going to finally put respect on my name because it’s the fight world and social media, so there are always going to be haters,” he laughs. 

“But to go out there and prove that not only can I become champion, but I can beat one of the best middleweights to ever do this, in front of my fellow countryman, in front of the mighty Springboks, and, most importantly, with raising that South African flag on the biggest stage in the world means the absolute world to me.”

With his heroes in the stands and the roaring pride of an entire nation behind him, Du Plessis is fueled by a patriotic fervor that could prove to be the most unstoppable force MMA has ever witnessed.