Drew Williams
Kristen Anzelc
Kate Klipatskaya
Iryna Slukhynska
Anna Mania
theWit Chicago
Dave Gordon
Dricus Du Plessis is not pretending losing didn’t hurt.
After the first UFC loss of his career, the former middleweight champion did not try to spin it into something neat. He lost. It stung. And for a little while, he let himself feel that.
“Obviously, after that loss, it took around four weeks where you feel sorry for yourself, which is totally normal,” Du Plessis tells SWAGGER. “And then you just have to one day get up and be like, ‘listen, this happened.’”
Now, with his main event against Kamaru Usman in Oklahoma City just days away, Du Plessis is focused on one thing: winning.
“Mentally, I’m obviously just in a sense of wanting to get a win back,” he tells SWAGGER. “I’ve always been rock solid mentally, but now it’s just more of a want.”
Du Plessis handled the aftermath with composure, but composure should not be mistaken for comfort. “I think that I’m a good sportsman, a very good sportsman,” he says. “But I am a terrible loser, because I do believe a good loser becomes a frequent one. And I just hate losing.”
So he went back to work. The loss did not make him want to become an entirely different fighter. It made him look more closely at what had to be tightened.
“It’s not about becoming a completely new fighter at all,” he says. “It’s just the little small cracks that there were, they’ve been fixed.”
That balance matters now, and Du Plessis is trying to be more precise than ever before. “The biggest thing is to go and fix what was broken and not try to fix something that is not broke,” he says.
When we spoke, Du Plessis had just finished what he calls the toughest session of camp — a punishing rotation where a fresh training partner comes in every minute, pushing him well beyond the fight distance before the taper begins. By then, the work was no longer about piling on more for the sake of it. It was about arriving with the right body, the right mind and the right kind of hunger.
“I’m as fit as I can be and as ready as I can be,” he says. “Now, it’s just maintaining and getting there.”
Recovery is also built into the routine: sauna and cold plunge every morning, compression boots, physio, food, supplements and stretching, which he admits is not exactly his favourite. “I’m not a big fan of stretching, but it is something that I have to do at least once or twice a week.”
Before he was a former champion trying to climb back to the belt, Du Plessis was the first South African to win a UFC championship. “Being able to carry my flag and be the best in the world, I mean, there is no prouder thing that a man can do, I believe.”
That pride still sits close to the surface. So does the competitiveness, which does not seem to switch off when he leaves the cage.
His relationship with sport also extends into Knox Hydrate, the hydration brand Du Plessis co-founded with Ethan Hughes. From the beginning, he says, sport had to be at the centre of it. “I thought if I’m going to do a business venture, I need to be able to give back to the sport that gave me everything,” he says.
Away from fighting, Du Plessis races rally, oval and endurance formats, and recently bought a Porsche that he insists is not for competition. “That’s my baby,” he says with a smile. “It’s not to race.”
Then there is the side of Du Plessis that may surprise UFC fans. He plays guitar, drums and a little piano, and says he is usually the first person on the mic at karaoke. He also competed on The Masked Singer South Africa, which sounded easy enough until the mask came off.
“Mask on, I didn’t care at all. I just enjoyed it,” he says. “I then had to sing without the mask when they revealed my identity, and that was terrifying.” It is not exactly the image most people have of a UFC fighter, but that is part of what makes Du Plessis so interesting.
During camp, everyone close to him feels the schedule: his fiancée, friends, parents, and brothers. “These people in my life that I’ve brought in, friends, family, my fiancée, my parents, my brothers, almost everybody takes a back seat and they do it with me because they are in it with me,” he says.
As fight night gets closer, that support system matters. Camp may be built around one fighter, but Du Plessis makes it clear that the people closest to him carry part of it too.
“I promise this will be the best me that there’s ever been,” he says. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life. Even at the times where I thought I’ve done what we can, I now realize that I can always do more, and I can’t wait to go and showcase that.”
On July 18, Du Plessis meets Kamaru Usman with the cracks addressed, the hard work banked and the loss no longer something to sit with, but something to answer.
That answer has to come the only way it can: in the cage.
“This is what I love to do,” Du Plessis says. “It’s been almost a year. I haven’t had a fight like this in a long time, and I cannot wait to go and do what I love most, and I won’t disappoint. I promise that.”
Fans can watch UFC Fight Night: Du Plessis vs. Usman live on Paramount+ in the United States and Sportsnet+ in Canada.
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