Most in the combat sports world would agree that Dricus du Plessis is next for a middleweight title shot — but that doesn't include two of the most important men in Israel Adesanya and UFC president Dana White.

Following his upset second-round TKO win over Robert Whittaker in July, du Plessis looked set to fight Adesanya for the middleweight title at UFC 293 which takes place Saturday night in Sydney, Australia.

The stars seemed to align as the pair even faced off after the fight and given the bad blood they have, it promised to be one of the most anticipated contests of the year.

However, the turnaround was too quick for Du Plessis. The South African was already banged up going into the Whittaker fight and with just two months until UFC 293, he made the choice to decline the fight which is why Sean Strickland is fighting Adesanya this weekend.

It's a decision that didn't go down well with Adesanya or even White for that matter as the latter remained noncommittal about whether Du Plessis would get the next shot.

“You know how much I love when guys turn down fights,” White said in his Contender Series post-fight press conference on Tuesday (via MMA Fighting). “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens on Saturday and then we’ll go from there.”

Adesanya recently stated that he still hoped to fight Du Plessis as it would be one of the most important fights in recent memory. That said, he agrees with White and feels “Stillknocks” messed up.

He even went as far as saying Du Plessis may need two more wins — especially with the middleweight matchup taking place at UFC 294.

“Dricus doesn’t know how to play the game,” Adesanya said during media day. “Look, you can’t sit on your f*****g, is it ranking or whatever, and think you’ve got it locked in. This is the UFC. If you look back at the history of the UFC, s**t happens.

“So he thought he was sitting pretty, but he might have to fight two more times before I get a shot at this. But he doesn’t call the shots. I do. I need you to understand that. I call the shots. You don’t call the shot, dickless. You need to understand this. You can sit pretty wherever you want, but if I decide to, I might give [the title shot] to whoever wins between [Paulo] Costa and Khamzat [Chimaev on Oct. 21 at UFC 294], not you.”