UFC champ Dricus du Plessis aims even higher — ‘I want to be the greatest to ever do this’

Dricus Du Plessis.(Photo: @dricusduplessisold school)

By Keanan Hemmonsbey

16 Feb 2025

He has defended his Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight belt and marketed himself to superstardom levels.

Having raced up the middleweight rankings, clinched the title and defended it twice, South African Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) star Dricus du Plessis is beginning to cement a serious legacy in the American mixed martial arts promotion company.

One more defence of his belt and Du Plessis will be in the top three to have fought in the division in its history. Only two men, arguably the two most recognisable names to have fought in the UFC, have defended the UFC middleweight belt more than three times: Anderson Silva and Israel Adesanya.

If Du Plessis beats his next opponent, who he hopes will be Khamzat Chimaev, he will tie Chris Weidman’s three-fight defence a decade ago.

“I want to be the greatest to ever do this, but Khamzat’s next,” Du Plessis said. “I want to make sure that this belt, the middleweight title, that there’s no question that I’m the GOAT [greatest of all time] of the middleweight division.

“I know you have Anderson Silva, who in my mind is the GOAT of the middleweight division, and you have Adesanya, who’s done incredible things, but it’s not just about how many times you defended the belt.

“It’s about who you fight, how you defended it and how you’ve done it, and what period of time you’ve done it [in]. It’s about making sure I am the best middleweight and then going up. I’m not rushing to say my next fight is Alex Pereira. I want Khamzat next. He deserves a hiding.

“I wanna share the octagon with that man. I want to be that guy. I’ve beaten Adesanya, who’s beaten him.

“I know I can beat him and at 205 lbs [a weight class up] 100%.

After his unanimous-decision victory over Sean Strickland, Du Plessis hinted at going up a division to light heavyweight to defeat title-holder Pereira, who was ringside for Strickland in their clash last weekend.

Pereira will meet Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313 next month for a title fight and Du Plessis has a date with destiny with Khamzat before their schedules clear up for the pair to meet.

“Khamzat’s first,” Du Plessis said. “I said [to Pereira], please beat Ankalaev. No hate against Ankalaev, I just want to beat Alex Pereira. It’s nothing personal against Ankalaev.

“Pereira is just a legend in this sport to me already. It will be amazing to beat him for my legacy.”

Dricus du Plessis. (Photo: @dricusduplessisold school)

The brand

Du Plessis’s legacy continues to grow in the octagon, but he’s also developing a strong legacy outside it. Four fights into his UFC career, having beaten Darren Till and preparing to face off against Derek Brunson, Du Plessis partnered with the clothing brand Old School, a growing local sports supporters’ brand.

Under the moniker “Stillknocks”, which is a play on the sleeping medication Stilnox, the label and Du Plessis developed a clothing and footwear brand for the middleweight champion.

But how did a burgeoning clothing brand partner with a world-renowned athlete? It got him before he was globally known, recognising that he was on the road to stardom before it happened.

“His friend made me understand just how good he is at the sport and how close the roadmap to global fame is in fighting sports compared with other sports,” Daneel Steinmann, cofounder of Old School, told Daily Maverick.

“In other sports the growth is over a few years, where with UFC it’s a very dramatic rise to fame. Each fight you win, you double your audience, and each fight you lose, you halve it.

“It’s a high-growth environment and he was a very talented guy, and like any South African, he just has that grit and hardness that distinguishes us from other countries’ people from a sports perspective.”

Steinmann cofounded the company with his brother Stephan. They began with partnerships with rugby players, but these often fell apart as soon as the players reached a bigger audience.

“As a business, we wanted to back athletes as Old School was growing. The whole time we were looking at rugby players, but the moment they grew they got bigger contracts from Adidas or Nike,” Steinmann said.

Read more: SA’s Dricus du Plessis dismantles bloody challenger Strickland in UFC middleweight clash

“We realised we needed to bet big on someone who has a big upside. We had a mutual friend and we ended up having conversations and alignments on what he wants to build a merchandising brand around.

“Back then, he was not even highly ranked in the UFC, but when we looked at it from an Old School perspective, we realised that the crazy thing about this sport is the [exponential growth].

“We looked at Conor McGregor, for instance. Before Conor, the biggest guy to ever come from Ireland was Brian O’Driscoll, from a rugby perspective. But when Conor entered the stage, it just showed the size of the UFC audience and the globalisation of it.

“That’s when we realised Dricus [was] three or four fights away from being one of the most famous sports personalities in South Africa.”

Next steps

Regardless of what the next few challenging fights hold for Du Plessis, he will go down in history as South Africa’s greatest mixed martial arts fighter yet.

Like Du Plessis, Chimaev has never lost a fight in his UFC career. He is on an eight-fight streak compared with Du Plessis’s nine.

Going up a weight division, despite ruling a lower weight division, has proved troublesome for some of the greatest fighters, including Adesanya. But Du Plessis has supreme confidence in his ability, and rightly so. His stardom could extend into another stratosphere with victory over his anticipated next two opponents.

And even if it doesn’t go as planned, the burly fighter has marketed himself as a name big enough for any challenger to want to cross. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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