In a stunning upset, Dricus Du Plessis defeated Robert Whittaker by knockout in round two to claim his spot as the number one contender for the UFC middleweight title at UFC 290 on Saturday night.

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Du Plessis (20-2) was the clear underdog coming into the fight, but he used his size and awkward style of striking and grappling to make it difficult for Whittaker (24-7) to get a read on him early. In the second round, Whittaker seemed to find his timing a bit better but all it took was one clean shot from Du Plessis to put Whittaker on wobbly legs and then that was all she wrote as Du Plessis smelled blood in the water and pounced for the knockout finish.

Dricus Du Plessis proved all the naysayers and the trolls on social media that were counting him out wrong. He even went on to mock those talking about his cardio all week long leading up to this in his post-fight speech.

“Can you see how out of breath I am? I guess I did a few running regimes this whole camp. I'm lying, I told you I have cardio for days! And secondly, you have t-minus two hours to go delete a whole lot of comments because I am coming for that social media.”

Du Plessis then had a face-to-face with the middleweight champion of the world Israel Adesanya and their bad blood spilled out in the octagon as they were jawing back and forth as they faced off in the center. Barring no injuries on either side, next up is a middleweight title fight between the middleweight champion Israel Adesanya and the new number one contender Dricus Du Plessis at UFC 293 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia on September 9th, 2023.