Daniel Cormier has cautioned UFC lightweight kingpin Islam Makhachev against a potential move to middleweight despite a fight against welterweight champion Belal Muhammad likely being off the table.
Makhachev has expressed interest in skipping the welterweight division entirely and jumping straight to middleweight in pursuit of becoming a two-division UFC champ. However, Cormier believes that current middleweight titleholder Dricus Du Plessis is often underestimated, despite recent wins over top-tier opponents in Robert Whittaker, Sean Strickland, and Israel Adesanya.
“I know it may not look as appealing to some as they want their world champions to look, but we just watched him submit Israel Adesanya,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “We just watched him break him down over the course of three rounds and get him to a point where Izzy got submitted by him — something we’d never seen before. We have seen him beat Sean Strickland, we have seen him finish Robert Whittaker. At some point, we have to respect Dricus Du Plessis.
“I think Islam respects him. I don’t know that Islam would understand how hard it would be to fight a guy of that size. I think this guy might weigh 220 when he’s not making weight. Many people talk about the amount of weight that the Russians cut, and Islam cuts weight to make 155, but I don’t know even on his heaviest days if he weighs 185. Now, I’m not saying that he can’t do it — I just think that it’s much harder than anyone understands to go up two weight classes.”
Du Plessis is set to defend his title against Strickland in a rematch at UFC 312 this Saturday in Sydney, Australia.
