And the new middleweight champion of the world has arrived! Dricus Du Plessis has snatched the belt out of Sean Strickland‘s grips in the former champion’s very first title defense at UFC 297. After a hard-fought battle, it came to a split decision where Du Plessis won 48-47 for two judges and lost 47-48 for one of them.

But he did hand Strickland his flowers by acknowledging his brilliant performance during the match. Both the fighters took each others’ eyes out quite literally with Strickland’s eye bleeding all over the place while Du Plessis’ almost shutting down. Here’s what happened next.

Dricus Du Plessis has the former champion in mind

Once Du Plessis won, he celebrated grandly with his family and once Daniel Cormier came in for a post-fight interview, Du Plessis had some names in mind. He noted how former champion Alex Pereira was in Strickland’s corner. However, Pereira is no longer in the division. So who is better than his archrival?

Du Plessis went on to call out Israel Adesanya, the ‘Stylebender’ who is currently on a break away from the UFC. Now that he has the motivation, will ‘Izzy’ respond to Du Plessis’ call out? Or does he have other priorities in mind? Adesanya pretty much handed ‘Stillknocks’ an embarrassing humiliation last time.

Clearly, there’s a score to settle for the South African. Israel Adesanya and him have never fought inside a cage, however, the two did exchange verbal blows when Du Plessis had freshly knocked out Robert Whittaker at UFC 290. And Adesanya humiliated ‘Stillknocks’ with his language.

He came inside the cage to face off against Du Plessis and started claiming his own African heritage against the South African fighter. Adesanya overwhelmed him by interrupting him from ever finishing his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan. Now, perhaps Du Plessis wants to return the favor. But he also has another fighter lurking in the shadows.

Who else could Du Plessis face?

As soon as Dricus Du Plessis claimed the belt for himself, every other middleweight fighter put him in their crosshairs. And one of them was the undefeated Chechen, Khamzat Chimaev. Chimaev quickly took to his X account to call Du Plessis out.

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“See you soon biplisi ufc300” Chimaev tweeted. He had been promised a title fight for the middleweight championship for defeating Kamaru Usman. However, it turned out that Chimaev had fallen sick and has only freshly recovered fully. Will he be Du Plessis’ next big challenge after Strickland? Or will it be Israel Adesanya? What are your predictions?

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