08-05-2025
UFC champ Dricus Du Plessis: Bo Nickal suffering first loss was 'satisfying to watch'
UFC champ Dricus Du Plessis: Bo Nickal suffering first loss was 'satisfying to watch'
Dricus Du Plessis reveled in Bo Nickal's defeat at UFC on ESPN 67.
Nickal (7-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC) suffered his first-career loss when he was finished by Reinier de Ridder in this past Saturday's co-main event at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa.
Nickal's confidence rubbed plenty of people the wrong way – including UFC middleweight champion Du Plessis, who pulled no punches when addressing his loss. He thinks Nickal quit.
"I have no problem with Bo Nickal's hype. What I do have a problem with was, he was talking about people who have done what he has never done," Du Plessis said on "The Sias du Plessis Show." "He became a three-time NCAA champion if I'm not mistaken. Well, this is not wrestling. This is not wrestling, my good man, and he found that out the hard way. I think he thought he was going to walk through Reinier, and I thought Reinier had a beautiful game plan. You've got to be careful how you talk in this game. You start talking when you get there. He's fought nobodies in terms of being able to talk and then going and saying 'the championship fight was sh*t; these guys can't wrestle; that's not impressive, that win.
"But I mean, humble pie does wonderful things for a man, and I think he got served a full pie. It was satisfying to watch because you can't just disrespect the people who've done what you wish you could do. He had this aura of, 'I am champion, nobody can outwrestle me, I can outwrestle anybody.' He was talking about wrestling, wrestling, wrestling. This is not wrestling, this is fighting. In my honest opinion, that knee, it was a proper knee. Bo Nickal gave up. Bo Nickal was broken mentally, and that's why he took the knee. He wasn't dropped by the knee. The knee caught him. It was a good knee, but if you're going down for knees like that, good luck at the top because the shots are a lot harder."
Nickal insists he's unbothered by the critics, and chalked off the loss to naivety more than overconfidence.
