In the early hours of the 21st of January 2024, most South Africans woke up to find that Pretoria-born Dricus Du Plessis won the first ever UFC gold by a South African when he defeated the then-undisputed UFC middleweight champion Sean Strickland.

The bout went all the way and had to go to the judges scorecards as neither one of the two men was willing to throw in the towel. The judges scored the fight (47-48 48-47 48-47), in favour of your new undisputed champion Dricus ‘Stillknocks’ Du Plessis.

With his resilience and offensive variety, Stillknocks did just enough to unseat the champion, who put up a superb boxing display with his own variation of the Philly Shell which is commonly used by the undefeated Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather. Sean’s counterpunches were not enough to prevent the challenger from relentlessly pressing forward though.

This fight was monumental for both fighters as this was Sean’s first title defence after winning the belt from Israel Adesanya, whom was first supposed to defend his title against Dricus in an all-African fight to determine the “real African fighter” but Dricus pulled out due to an injury.

Dricus on the other hand had the entirety of Southern Africa on his shoulders, as there has never been a champion in the UFC from that side of the world. Luckily, the man fighting out of Team CIT didn’t succumb to the pressure as he sticked to his game plan and got the win.