{"id":38283,"date":"2026-05-11T02:27:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T02:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sherdog.com\/news\/news\/Dricus-Du-Plessis-reacts-to-Sean-Stricklands-championship-win-at-UFC-328-201135"},"modified":"2026-05-11T02:27:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T02:27:42","slug":"dricus-du-plessis-reacts-to-sean-stricklands-championship-win-at-ufc-328","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/dricus-du-plessis-reacts-to-sean-stricklands-championship-win-at-ufc-328\/","title":{"rendered":"Dricus Du Plessis reacts to Sean Strickland\u2019s championship win at UFC 328"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n

Dricus Du
\nPlessis<\/a> just re-entered the
\nUFC<\/a> middleweight championship picture almost by default.<\/p>\n

The South African suffered a lopsided decision loss to Khamzat
\nChimaev<\/a> in their title clash at
\nUFC 319<\/a> last August, so one could excuse him if he was cheering
\nfor Sean
\nStrickland<\/a> on Saturday night. Strickland delivered in a big
\nway, upsetting Chimaev via split decision to reclaim the 185-pound
\nbelt in the UFC 328<\/a>
\nheadliner at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.<\/p>\n

\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Du Plessis, of course, is 2-0 against Strickland. \u201cStillknocks\u201d
\ncaptured 185-pound gold with a split-decision triumph over
\nStrickland at UFC 297 in January 2024, and he successfully defended
\nthe strap with a more convincing five-round verdict in their
\nrematch at UFC 312 in February 2025.<\/p>\n

Just As He Expected<\/h2>\n

Du Plessis reacted to Strickland\u2019s win on the
\nUFC<\/a>\u2019s Instagram account, claiming that he expected his rival to
\nperform the way he did against the Chechen grappler.<\/p>\n

\u201cFight went exactly the way I thought it would,\u201d Du Plessis said.
\n\u201cGreat, great fight by Strickland. Like I said, it\u2019s so hard to
\nkeep that man on the ground. He is incredibly tough to hold down.
\nHe made Khamzat tired, and that\u2019s exactly what happened. I knew,
\nand like I said in the standup [Khamzat] just won\u2019t be able to hang
\nwith him.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongratulations. I guess this makes me world champion again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Du Plessis hasn\u2019t competed since his loss to Chimaev at UFC 319.
\nThe former KSW champion was victorious in his first eight Octagon
\nappearances, besting the likes of Darren Till<\/a>,
\nDerek
\nBrunson<\/a>, Robert
\nWhittaker<\/a>, Strickland (twice) and Israel
\nAdesanya<\/a> along the way. While there has been no news regarding
\nDu Plessis\u2019 return, he did seem to indicate an announcement was on
\nthe horizon when he wrote \u201cSee y\u2019all soon\u201d in the caption of an
\nApril 28 Instagram post.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
<\/blockquote>\n

<\/center> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dricus Du Plessis just re-entered the UFC middleweight championship picture almost by default. The South African suffered a lopsided decision loss to Khamzat Chimaev in their title clash at UFC 319 last August, so one could excuse him if he was cheering for Sean Strickland on Saturday night. Strickland delivered in a big way, upsetting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martial-arts-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}