Dricus Du Plessis discusses his upcoming fight against Brad Tavares at UFC 276
Dricus Du Plessis has had a frustrating last few months.
After knocking out Trevin Giles and earning a $75,000 bonus at UFC 264 last July, Du Plessis was looking to improve his UFC moment later in the year so he was booked to fight Andre Muniz in December.
During his training camp, Du Plessis started dealing with a shoulder injury and elected to have surgery, which forced him to withdraw from the fight and be sidelined for six weeks following his surgery.
After having the surgery, Du Plessis was then booked to fight Chris Curtis in April and that fight never happened as an injury forced Curtis out of the fight.
With Curtis out, Du Plessis was scheduled to stay on the same fight card and fight Anthony Hernandez, however as soon as he touched down in the United States, the South Africa native learned that the UFC changed his plans and in a good way.
The UFC decided not to book Du Plessis with Hernandez and instead booked him with former interim title challenger Kelvin Gastelum. For Du Plessis, he was extremely happy with the pairing, but unfortunately the fight never happened has Gastelum would pull out of the fight in order to have surgery.
Now after months of having fights canceled, Du Plessis is finally going to fight again nearly one year since his last fight when he takes on Brad Tavares at UFC 276 on July 2.
Du Plessis is excited for the matchup as Tavares will come into the fight ranked at No. 12 in the official UFC middleweight rankings and a if he can get passed Tavares, he knows that he’ll be in a great position within a division.
Prior to the fight, Du Plessis spoke with MyMMANews about his matchup with Tavares, having so many fights get canceled, his shoulder surgery and he previewed the upcoming middleweight title bout between Israel Adesanya and Jared Cannoniner.
You can watch his full interview in the video above.
A full list of fights scheduled for UFC 276 are listed below
Israel Adesanya (C) vs. Jared Cannonier – for the UFC middleweight championship
Alexander Volkanovski (C) vs. Max Holloway – for the UFC featherweight championship
Sean Strickland vs. Alex Pereira
Pedro Munhoz vs. Sean O’Malley
Uriah Hall vs. Andre Muniz
Jessica Rose-Clark vs. Julija Stoliarenko
Brad Tavares vs. Dricus du Plessis
Lauren Murphy vs. Miesha Tate
Ian Garry vs. Gabe Green
Jessica Eye vs. Maycee Barber
Robbie Lawler vs. Bryan Barberena
Jim Miller vs. Bobby Green
Brad Riddell vs. Jalin Turner
