“One More Time”: Alex Pereira Plans to Jump at Middleweight After Dricus Du Plessis’ Win Over Israel Adesanya

Dricus Du Plessis just defeated the biggest challenge of his UFC career at UFC 305 by choking out Israel Adesanya to defend his middleweight title. That would generally mean a sigh of relief but peace doesn’t seem like its in the cards for the South African.

As if fighting Sean Strickland next wasn’t going to be a problem; following his win, light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira has declared a move to middleweight again and he’s coming for that title.

Pereira liked what he saw in the back and forth between Adesanya and Du Plessis and came to the conclusion that the time was right to change his status from a two division champion to a double champion.

“Coming down to 185 one more time”

 

 

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A post shared by Alex “Poatan” Pereira (@alexpoatanpereira)

Poatan’s initial plan was to move up to heavyweight and fight Jon Jones. However, the situation between Jones, Aspinall and Miocic is complicated enough as it is.

Seemingly no one other than Dana White wants the Jones vs. Miocic fight, most people want to see Aspinall take on Jones for the undisputed title and some just want to throw in Pereira into that equation as an agent of chaos and see if he can use left hook his way out of that sticky situation.

But Poatan is nothing if not unpredictable. That said, with his next title defense coming up against Khalil Rountree, it will be interesting to see how he will manage to come back down to middleweight.

Meanwhile, ‘Stillknocks’ is not that bothered about it, at least not yet. Right now, he is calling out anyone who doubted his credibility as a champion.

DDP calls out anyone who counted him out

Du Plessis will now take the middleweight title back to South Africa with him and with it a promised PPV from Dana White at some point during his reign.

And while many believed that he couldn’t get the job done against a returning, rampaging Izzy, the South African seems to have proved them all wrong, one punch at a time.

Following his fight, ‘Stillknocks’ could not help but call out all the people who doubted him going into this fight. In a video posted by MMA Junkie, he called everyone who doubted him an idiot.

“Everyone of you guys who said I wasn’t winning – I made you look like dumba**es”

 

“Everyone of you guys who said I wasn’t winning – I made you look like dumbasses”

Dricus Du Plessis sent a message to media and his critics after his #UFC305 title defense. pic.twitter.com/LOqSUjPoQH

— MMA Junkie (@MMAJunkie) August 18, 2024

The champion pulled out a last-minute rear-naked choke to win a fight after it looked like he looked like he was on his last legs. Not even Adesanya could have expected him to have such explosiveness left in his gas tank after struggling to even land punches in minutes prior to the submission hold.