UFC 305: Dricus du Plessis says Israel Adesanya has lost the hunger
Dricus du Plessis fires off the first shot of fight week ahead of his UFC 305 main event with Israel Adesanya.
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Dricus du Plessis has fired the first shot at Israel Adesanya ahead of their UFC 305 main event in Perth, claiming the Kiwi superstar has lost the hunger that made him one of the best pound-for-pound fighters on the planet.
South Africa’s du Plessis will make the first defence of the middleweight title he won in January, while Adesanya seeks to become a three-time middleweight champion next Sunday.
The animosity between them began well over a year ago, but after a face-off in Perth last month, du Plessis says the spark has disappeared.
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“The face-off, that’s a big thing for me,” du Plessis told this masthead. “It says a lot about how the fight’s gonna go down, the intensity and where the mindset is.
“I make reads off it the whole time, and his whole demeanour was off.
“We’re both warriors, and I saw that, but yeah, his whole demeanour was just off.”
From being forced to sleep in his gym at the start of his career, to becoming one of New Zealand’s highest paid and most well-known athletes, Adesanya has enjoyed a phenomenal rise.
But the trappings of wealth and fame have dimmed his competitive spirit, says du Plessis.
And the South African reckons he knows exactly when that happened.
“In my honest opinion, the last box he ticked in an incredible career – and he’s done some amazing things, he’s one of the greats – but the last thing he needed to tick off was beating Alex Pereira,” du Plessis said of Adesanya’s rivalry with the Brazilian.
“Pereira was a guy who beat him three times, followed him into another sport and took his belt.
“As soon as he won that rematch, he was never gonna be the same. He was never going to have the same attitude.
“That was the top for Israel Adesanya.
“That was the moment where he won, and went, ‘I did it’.”
After his revenge mission against Pereira to take his belt back in April last year, Adesanya was expected to defend the title against either Robert Whittaker or du Plessis.
When du Plessis picked up an injury while upsetting Whittaker in July, it left the UFC scrambling to find an opponent for Adesanya at its first event in Sydney in six years.
The loudmouthed American was given no chance of beating Adesanya in at UFC 293, but pulled off one of the greatest upsets in UFC title fight history with a one-sided unanimous decision.
It was later revealed that Adesanya had been caught drink driving in Auckland just three weeks before the fight, lending credence to du Plessis’ claims that the New Zealander has lost his edge.
Adesanya had 87 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood when he was tested. The legal limit in New Zealand is 50 milligrams.
He pleaded guilty and escaped conviction, but the episode was hardly a good look so close to his fight.
Which is why du Plessis says he can see through the bluster and bravado that will come over the next week.
“It’s hard to admit it to yourself, and he’s trying to force it,” he said. “He’s trying to prove to himself that he still has it.
“More than everything else, he’s trying to convince himself that he still has that hunger that he always had.
“And I just don’t think he has it anymore.”
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