Dricus Du Plessis defends title, submits Israel Adesanya late in UFC 305 main event
The Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to us tonight, August 17, 2024, for UFC 305, going down live from the RAC Arena in Perth, Australia.
Headlining the event was a title bout at 185 lbs between UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis (22-2) and former two-time UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya (24-4).
Du Plessis had been perfect thus far into his seven-fight promotional tenure, defeating the likes of Markus Perez (KO), Trevin Giles (KO), Brad Tavares (UD), Darren Till (neck crank), Derek Brunson (KO), Robert Whittaker (TKO), and Sean Strickland (SD) in that time.
Adesanya on the other hand lost the title to Strickland in his latest appearance following his reclaim of it with a stunning stoppage victory over Alex Pereira (KO) last April.
Continue reading to see how our UFC 305 middleweight championship main event went down:
Official Result: Dricus Du Plessis def. Israel Adesanya via submission (rear naked choke) at 3:38 of round four
The former champion landed a few solid kicks onto the champion early on, first an inside leg kick, and later on nasty round kicks to the body. He also landed a good right hand to the body as the opening round came to a close. Du Plessis on the other hand blitzed in and landed good punches on a few occasions and also landed some good leg kicks of his own.
Du Plessis perfectly timed a double leg takedown in the second as Adesanya was letting go on a combination, soon after taking his back though he eventually fell off. Adesanya wasn’t out of trouble yet though, as he’d get taken down twice more before the bell sounded.
Adesanya really started to tag Du Plessis’ body up in round three, landing a number of shovel hooks to it, many of them in combination, and it appeared to be working as Du Plessis’ movement and strikes are now labored. He also landed a vicious spinning back elbow Du Plessis just ate to his chin.
Adesanya continued landing beautiful body shots in the fourth, and it appeared the fight was his to win as Du Plessis wasn’t doing much, appearing more fatigued as the fight went on. Du Plessis however caught him with a heavy left hook, soon after landing a series of right hooks in close that dropped Adesanya.
Du Plessis jumped straight to backmount from there and immediately sunk in the rear naked choke for the submission finish in round four.
Dricus Du Plessis really is a special talent; he has such an awkward style that doesn’t look too awfully technical, though he is very technical, and he finishes just about everyone. He’s now 22-2 across 24 pro fights with 20 finishes, which includes finishes when he claimed each the EFC welterweight championship, EFC middleweight championship, and KSW welterweight championships before joining the UFC.
Furthermore, our UFC middleweight champion has his first title defense out of the way with a stoppage victory over the no. 2 middleweight ever, and also improves to 8-0 inside the octagon tonight at UFC 305.
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