UFC CEO Dana White doesn’t want to book an immediate rematch between newly-crowned middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis and former 185-pound titleholder Sean Strickland in the wake of UFC 297, despite a razor-thin victory for “Stillknocks” that still has toxic MMA fans attacking anyone who didn’t vote for “Tarzan.”
White even scored the bout for Strickland.
That would suggest the promotion has something bigger in store for Du Plessis. The obvious choice would be a championship grudge match against Israel Adesanya at UFC 300, based on their existing rivalry, but there have been some questions about “The Last Stylebender’s” health over the past few weeks. That’s why Du Plessis’ manager, Daniel Rubenstein, messaged Team Adesanya ahead of UFC 297.
“Preference wise, I think it’s Adesanya. I think there’s heat between the two of them, they’ve already done all the lead up to build the fight. I think [Adesanya] is who we’d all prefer as a team,” Rubenstein told Anik & Florian podcast. “Very honestly, he wasn’t gonna call out Izzy if Izzy wasn’t gonna be ready. I hit up Izzy’s manager like, ‘Hey is Izzy gonna be ready? We’re gonna call out Izzy if he’s gonna be ready. But if he’s not gonna be ready for [UFC 300] I don’t want Dricus barking up the wrong tree. We’ll call out Alex Pereira, he’s right there in the Octagon.’ They told me Izzy would be ready, so that was the callout he made.”
The UFC 300 pay-per-view (PPV) event, which takes place on April 13 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, does not yet have a championship main event. White recently told impatient MMA fans that he’s still “playing with a couple options” for the supposedly “insane” fight card. In addition, matchmakers previously rolled out a pair of new fights for UFC 300 (see the current lineup here) but neither of them have the “wow” factor fans were expecting.
Hopefully there will be a (bigger) announcement over the next few days.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
