Pity poor Dricus du Plessis, the blameless pariah of UFC 319

Yahoo

2 days ago

Dricus du Plessis got about six words into his first answer to the first question at Thursday's pre-fight press conference to promote Saturday's UFC 319 in Chicago. Then the boos shut him down.
This poor guy. We don't say that often about the reigning champion in any combat sport. But my god, the look on his face at first. After a few seconds of this he managed to roll with it, laughing it off and letting the crowd have its fun.
But those first moments? When he realized the crowd in Chicago was apparently all the way in the corner of undefeated challenger Khamzat Chimaev and passionately aligned against him? My friends, there was a look of surprise and a little bit of pain on the man's face. And when he decided to set the mic down and see just how committed to this bit the press conference crowd really was, it went nearly a full minute before UFC CEO Dana White spoke up to break the spell.
If you're DDP in that moment, don't you have to wonder exactly what it is you ever did to these people? Was it winning his first six UFC fights — five of them inside the distance — before claiming the 185-pound title? Was it beating Sean Strickland twice with a submission win over Israel Adesanya, arguably the best middleweight of the last 10 years, sandwiched in between? Was it continually showing up when called upon, facing all comers and generally refraining from embarrassing the sport the way a few of its most established stars have?
Maybe his crime is much simpler than that: He's not Khamzat Chimaev.
You might not think that Midwestern fight fans would be all-in for a Chechen boogeyman with an Abe Lincoln beard, but they are. The same appears to be true for much of the UFC fan base as a whole.
People love this man of few words, about 25% of which are some combination of 'smash' and 'brother.' He shows up with this malevolent grin, like the neighborhood's most worrisome kid getting ready for another wonderful day of pulling the legs off insects. Every person his eyes fall upon, it's like he's automatically doing the math in his head to determine what it would take to lift them off their feet and move them somewhere unkind.
Of course fight fans go for that. How could they not? And the fact that he's felt like a champ in waiting for the last several years only increases the gleeful anticipation now that he's on the eve of finally getting his shot.
But poor, poor DDP. All he's done is show up and win and still we refuse to believe in him. Every fight it's the same story. OK, we tell ourselves, he might have won the last one. But this one? Surely this is where it stops. Then he hurks and jerks his way to another victory while looking like an alien who's still learning to work the controls on his human suit and we tell ourselves that's all well and good but the next time he won't be so lucky.
But this time. Against the terrifying and undeniable force that is Khamzat the Cruel. This time he's in for it, man. We're sure of it.
All of which should force us to stop and ask, purely as a fun little thought experiment: What if that's wrong? What if the guy who's cashed as an underdog in three of his last four fights goes out there on Saturday night and does it again?
For one thing, it'll crush the spirits of a lot of those gleeful boo-birds who showed up to the press conference. It will also give him victories over every middleweight we've ever branded as 'elite' since the end of the Anderson Silva era.
Maybe (just maybe) it will even force us to treat the man with some damn respect. Because, really, what will there be left to say? What could we possibly hate on him for then? The MMA world is looking at him right now like he's a cow being marched off to a highly entertaining ritualistic sacrifice. If he turns out instead to be a bull that gores his way to bloody freedom, wouldn't we then have to admit that we were wrong?
I know we hate doing that. But I just don't see any other choice if du Plessis leaves Chicago with the UFC middleweight title still part of his carry-on luggage. Those same people who dedicated a minute of their lives to shutting the man down with boos on Thursday will owe him an ovation that's at least twice as long if he's still standing on Saturday.