Israel Adesanya reveals his Dricus du Plessis vs Khamzat Chimaev prediction

UFC star Israel Adesanya has given his prediction for this weekend’s title fight between Dricus du Plessis and Khamzat Chimaev.

Tomorrow night, Dricus du Plessis will defend the UFC middleweight championship against Khamzat Chimaev. The two will collide in their highly anticipated UFC 319 main event, and right now, it’s pretty hard to say which way it’s going to go. Everyone is bound to view this fight differently but given what we know about both men, all we can really expect is that it’s going to be an incredibly fun fight.

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For Chimaev, getting the takedowns early is going to be crucial to his success. On the flip side, for du Plessis, he needs to try and drag this fight into the later rounds, which is a place that we haven’t really seen Khamzat go in his mixed martial arts career.

In a recent video on his YouTube channel, du Plessis’ former opponent Israel Adesanya gave his thoughts on how this fight could play out in Chicago.

Adesanya backs du Plessis to defeat Chimaev

“I’ve looked at this fight two ways: Khamzat comes out, just grabs a hold of DDP, and just drags him into deep water in the first or second, and finishes him,” Adesanya said on his YouTube channel. “Or DDP matches his crazy, matches Khamzat’s crazy with his own type of crazy and his willingness to not quit, and then drags Khamzat into deep waters of the third, fourth, or fifth round and gets him out of there. That’s how I see this fight going.”

“Khamzat showed his hand. He’s going to go after him from the get-go,” Adesanya added. “But DDP, I think, can weather the storm and probably finish Khamzat later on. Because Khamzat, if it gets to Rounds 3, 4, 5, it’s going to be a problem. It probably won’t get to Round 5. I say Round 3 or 4, DDP. But if Khamzat is going to win, it’s going to be in the first round. It’s going to be impressive, it’s going to be spectacular, it’s going to be violent. I’m going to go with DDP.

“It’s good if he’s champion, (but) the UFC probably wants Khamzat to be champion because he is a guy that brings a lot of eyes, says it and gets it done type sh*t. But I like having DDP as champion because I still think it’s inspiring to a lot of Africans – especially South Africans, as well, like me, Kamaru, and Francis did for the continent as the three kings. He can do that solely as the African champ in the UFC. So yeah, I think he’ll get it done. He’s just stubborn. I’m going to go Dricus by late TKO.”

Quotes via MMA Junkie