Fight analyst Dan Hardy used an interesting simile to explain the key difference between the two title fighters in Saturday night’s main event at UFC 312 as middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis puts his title on the line against former champion Sean Strickland.
Hardy, a former UFC welterweight title challenger, is one of the most respected analysts in the game, and he rewatched the first meeting between Du Plessis and Strickland as part of his Outlawed Picks Podcast, as he dissected the technical aspects of several fights on the card in Sydney this weekend.
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More news: Sean Strickland Recalls ‘Most Challenging’ Moment in First Fight With Dricus Du Plessis
And, as he attempted to describe the differentiating factors that separate the champion from the challenger, Hardy equated the fighters’ relative arsenals as music playlists, with, in Hardy’s view, one fighter offering a much deeper selection of tracks than the other.
“It’s like, if they were both a playlist, and each technique is equated to a song, Sean Strickland’s playlist has got like five or six songs on it that play on repeat, and Du Plessis has got like 25 on his playlist that play on repeat,” he explained, in conversation with his wife, UFC women’s flyweight Veronica Hardy.
“You don’t know which one’s going to come next. (Du Plessis is) going to spin, or he’s going to kick you in the leg, or he’s going to kick you in the midsection, or he’s going to level change, which obviously he started to sprinkle in, in the second round, or he’s going to kick you in the head. Then he’s going to start winging over the top with hooks.
“There’s more variety in his game, which seemed to keep Strickland on the back foot for longer in the fight.”
Hardy explained how that difference in terms of the variety of weapons was crucial in Du Plessis’ split-decision victory in his first fight with Strickland at UFC 297 in January 2023. But that wasn’t the only thing in the South African’s favor.
“Du Plessis is just more game,” he observed, as he rewatched the first fight play…
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