UFC 319 wasn’t an easy night for Driscus du Plessis.
The former UFC Middleweight Champion walked into his bout against Khamzat Chimaev on a 11-fight winning streak and he beat some legit fighters; Darren Till, Robert Whittaker, Israel Adesanya, and Sean Strickland all lost to Plessis and in some cases, in dominant fashion.
So it was stunning that Plessis was outclassed by Chimaev at UFC 319. Now the big difference between some of his other opponents and Plessis is that he’s never fought a wrestler on the level of Chimaev.
There are plenty of people who called for Plessis' demise including former UFC Welterweight Champion Belal Muhammad.
“I called it,” Muhammad said on his YouTube channel. “I thought it was going to be an easy fight. I thought it was going to be a walk-through-you fight for Khamzat, and it was. Dana said he thought there were four 10-8 rounds. I had it the same. People are going to complain, people are going to say what they want to say, but that was a dominant victory.
“For Khamzat, it was too easy to take him down and hold him down. I know people are coming at him, but it’s on DDP to move. If I’m Khamzat, and I’ve got a full crucifix on you, and I’m hitting you, DDP needed the explosion, DDP needed the risk factor of trying to do anything to get up. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to get submitted. I think he was just satisfied with getting through the fight without getting submitted.”
Muhammad questioned whether Plessis took Chimaev’s wrestling seriously or not. He noted that his last three fights were against strikers and stated that he needs to fixed his gameplan asap.
“I’m just wondering what their game plan was. What they thought was going to happen, if they underestimated the wrestling?” Muhammad said “… Your last three fights were all against strikers, so you didn’t really have the risks of going against anybody that’s going to shoot on you. Now you did, now we see. That’s a hole. Khamzat pretty much dominated it. …
“DDP got away with a lot of stuff, mistakes that he makes, because his matchups were kind of favorable for him, not against any grapplers. Now we know. He needs to fix stuff, he needs to get better.”
Plessis definitely needs to readjust his gameplan after his performance. If can get better at his takedown defense and ground control then Plessis could be a serious threat to Khamzat if a rematch does happen down the line.