Former UFC double champ Henry Cejudo has been so impressed with Dricus Du Plessis’s performance against Sean Strickland at UFC 312 that he went on to pick him against potential future opponents Khamzat Chimaev and Alex Pereira.
The UFC middleweight kingpin was as dominant as he could be in his second outing against Strickland, skyrocketing his brand even further. The challenger left with a broken nose at UFC 312, and before that, DDP showcased his grappling prowess by becoming the first fighter to submit Israel Adesanya.
Now, fans are excited to see “Stillknocks” get tested against Chimaev and Pereira. While “”Borz” is coming off an impressive first-round submission victory over Robert Whittaker, “Poatan” has looked invincible at light heavyweight.
In a recent episode of Pound 4 Pound with Kamaru & Henry, Cejudo heavily praised DDP for his cardio and explained why he could hand defeats to both Chimaev and Pereira:
“If you’re asking me now Kumaru, who is it if we do see a match between DDP and Alex Pereira. Even though I do believe that Pereira is going to beat Magomed Ankalaev, I’ll definitely put my money with DDP. I think DDP, stylistically, is a problem dude. And I know DDP is gonna go in there and f****g wrestle. And I think with the grappling, I think that could be very problematic, but there’s one thing that I will say is he will need to be careful because Alex Pereira does a really good job of cornering and there’s a lot of little sloppy things that DDP does but I think I put my strengths and his mixing of the fighting against a guy like Alex Pereira.”
While discussing a potential match-up with Chimaev, “Triple C” again picked the South African despite knowing that the Emirati fighter is on an iconic undefeated run. The latter’s ability to out grapple and finish elite fighters like Whittaker and Usman definitely makes him a threat to anyone at middleweight.
“I personally think he beats up Khamzat Chimaev. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to submit, I think DDP is scrambly and I think his conditioning, bro, I mean I want to put him up there. Even like this particularly, this last fight, you want to kind of, you know, maybe the top three, maybe greatest right now cardio in the UFC. Obviously, Merab is one and then you can go two three but whatever it is, he looked freaking good and he looked so good that fifth round where he was like hey, I was able to go another five more rounds. I mean this guy’s ready and this guy’s gonna be a problem for anybody at 185 lbs and I am excited to see this dude fight Khamzat and if he beats a guy like Khamzat Chimaev, I would love for him to go up and then fight the winner of Alex Pereira and Ankalaev.”
Ankalaev is the no.1 ranked UFC light heavyweight contender set to fight the champion at UFC 313 in T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada on March 8, 2025. The outcome of this fight will naturally impact the futures of the middleweight and light heavyweight divisions.
