Dricus du Plessis needed 25 minutes to make his point on Saturday night, and by the final bell there wasn’t a judge in Oklahoma City who saw it differently. All three scorecards went his way, 50-45 and 49-46 twice, as he outworked Kamaru Usman over five rounds in the UFC Fight Night 281 main event at Paycom Center.
It was Dricus Du Plessis’s first fight since losing the middleweight title to Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 319 last August, a defeat that ended an 11-fight unbeaten run inside the Octagon and left him searching for answers heading into Oklahoma City. Saturday gave him those answers in full, and then some.
That loss to Chimaev wasn’t close. The Chechen-born wrestler held du Plessis down for the better part of the 25-minute fight, limited him to a handful of significant strikes, and took the belt with a performance that raised real questions about how Dricus Du Plessis would hold up against elite grapplers going forward.
Usman was about as tough a follow-up test as the division could offer. A former long-reigning welterweight champion with one of the best takedown-defense numbers in UFC history, he was stepping up to 185 pounds for just the second time, chasing his own route back into title contention.
None of that mattered once the cage door shut. Du Plessis used his size and reach to control range from the opening bell, walked Usman down against the fence, and repeatedly threatened to end the fight outright, rocking Usman with head kicks on more than one occasion across the five rounds. There was no repeat of the extended top control that cost him against Chimaev.
“Three judges, three lopsided cards, and a fighter who spent 25 minutes trying to take Usman’s head off with kicks. That’s not a comeback win, that’s a statement!” – 🎙️Jay
For Usman, the picture looks tougher to shake. He falls to 21-5 and has now lost four of his last five fights, with last year’s decision win over Joaquin Buckley the only result breaking up a run of defeats to Leon Edwards, twice, and Khamzat Chimaev. At 39, and only two fights into life at middleweight, this was supposed to be proof his move up the scale still had teeth. Instead, it played out like a veteran running out of physical tools against a bigger, fresher opponent in his prime.
None of that erases what he built over a decade in the UFC. Usman strung together 15 straight welterweight wins to open his Octagon career, defended that title six times in a row, and beat the likes of Colby Covington, Jorge Masvidal and Tyron Woodley along the way. Few fighters in the sport’s history have had a run like it.
Dricus Du Plessis, for his part, had already made his case for what a win here should mean before he ever stepped in the cage. He argued in the build-up that the winner of Saturday’s main event deserved the next crack at Sean Strickland’s middleweight title, pointing to his own pair of wins over the champion as evidence. A near-shutout decision over a fighter of Usman’s pedigree does nothing to weaken that argument.
Paycom Center hadn’t hosted a UFC event in almost a decade before Saturday, and it got a main event worth the wait. Du Plessis walked out with his record moving to 24-3, his confidence restored, and the loudest possible answer to everyone who wrote him off after Chicago.
📸 Images via UFC / Zuffa LLC
