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Events · Du Plessis vs Usman · Dricus Du Plessis vs Kamaru Usman
Red corner Dricus DuPlessis“Stillknocks”Team CIT · Pretoria, Gauteng
VSSettled
Blue corner KamaruUsman“The Nigerian Nightmare”Kill Cliff FC · Auchi, Edo
Middleweight5 rounds18 Jul 2026
The story going in
  • Has finished 6 of 9 UFC wins.
  • Has finished 5 of 16 UFC wins.
  • Lands 1.0 more significant strikes a minute than Usman.
  • 19 UFC bouts deep — 9 more than Plessis.
24-3
Record
21-5
−7 yr32
Age
39
+1″6' 1"
Height
6' 0"
76″
Reach
76″
Switch
Stance
Switch
10
UFC bouts
+919
+35%6/967% of wins
Finishes
5/1631% of wins
Team CIT
Gym
Kill Cliff FC
Pretoria, Gauteng
From
Auchi, Edo
Vitals, record, nickname and camp come from the public UFC fighter register and are current, not a snapshot of fight night. UFC bouts, finish rate and every storyline line are counted off the official UFC fight record. A tick marks the side holding the raw edge in that row — longer reach, taller, younger, more bouts, a higher finish rate. It is a fact about the tape, not a prediction, and rows with no clean comparison (record, stance, gym, hometown) carry no tick at all. Any row we cannot fill on both sides is left out rather than half-drawn. Streaks, bout counts and finish rates are as they stood going into this fight — this bout and everything after it is excluded from the count.

The call vs the fight

What we published before the card, next to what happened in the cage.

Our call
Dricus Du Plessis
54.3% confidentTOSS-UP
Method calledDEC 63%
Vs the market+4.3pp
Market had our pick at50%
The fight
Dricus Du Plessis
WIN
How it endedU-DEC
Round5 of 5
Clock5:00
Called it We called Dricus Du Plessis at 54.3% and Dricus Du Plessis won. The method call landed too.
Graded against the official UFC result, from the same record every other page on this site is graded from. The tick beside the verdict is the method call — a correct winner with a wrong method is a partial hit and reads as one. See the full public record →

Round by round

Every round the fight went, shaded by where the significant strikes actually landed — the takedowns, control time and knockdowns beside them, and how the three judges scored that round.

UFCStats · per round

5 rounds of tape

Round 15:00 of action
Dricus Du Plessis29 sig landed
HEAD76%22 of 50BODY7%2 of 5LEGS17%5 of 7
Kamaru Usman17 sig landed
HEAD47%8 of 28BODY41%7 of 11LEGS12%2 of 2
29 of 62
Sig.
strikes
17 of 41
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 1
0:00
Control
0:00
Distance 28Clinch 1Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 17Clinch 0Ground 0
Judges · this round · Plessis firstMichael Bell10–9Sal D'Amato10–9David Sutherland10–9
Round 25:00 of action
Dricus Du Plessis36 sig landed
HEAD89%32 of 66BODY6%2 of 2LEGS6%2 of 2
Kamaru Usman14 sig landed
HEAD57%8 of 32BODY43%6 of 7LEGS0%0 landed
36 of 70
Sig.
strikes
14 of 39
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 1
0:06
Control
0:15
Distance 34Clinch 2Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 11Clinch 3Ground 0
Judges · this round · Plessis firstMichael Bell10–9Sal D'Amato10–9David Sutherland10–9
Round 35:00 of action
Dricus Du Plessis25 sig landed
HEAD68%17 of 33BODY24%6 of 8LEGS8%2 of 2
Kamaru Usman17 sig landed
HEAD47%8 of 23BODY53%9 of 15LEGS0%0 landed
25 of 43
Sig.
strikes
17 of 38
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 1
0:00
Control
0:02
Distance 25Clinch 0Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 17Clinch 0Ground 0
Judges · this round · Plessis firstMichael Bell10–9Sal D'Amato10–9David Sutherland10–9
Round 45:00 of action
Dricus Du Plessis24 sig landed
HEAD75%18 of 43BODY25%6 of 7LEGS0%0 of 1
Kamaru Usman21 sig landed
HEAD52%11 of 35BODY38%8 of 12LEGS10%2 of 2
24 of 51
Sig.
strikes
21 of 49
0 of 0
Take-
downs
0 of 3
0:00
Control
0:00
Distance 23Clinch 1Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 21Clinch 0Ground 0
Judges · this round · Plessis firstMichael Bell10–9Sal D'Amato10–9David Sutherland10–9
Round 55:00 of actionEnded 5:00
Dricus Du Plessis22 sig landed
HEAD59%13 of 38BODY36%8 of 8LEGS5%1 of 1
Kamaru Usman23 sig landed
HEAD61%14 of 52BODY30%7 of 13LEGS9%2 of 2
22 of 47
Sig.
strikes
23 of 67
0 of 2
Take-
downs
0 of 1
0:00
Control
0:07
Distance 22Clinch 0Ground 0
Where it
happened
Distance 22Clinch 1Ground 0
Judges · this round · Plessis firstMichael Bell9–10Sal D'Amato10–9David Sutherland9–10

Significant strikes, takedowns, control time, knockdowns and submission attempts exactly as UFCStats recorded them for this bout, round by round. Zone percentages are that round’s landed head, body and leg counts over their own total — raw arithmetic, nothing modelled or smoothed. A round in which a fighter landed nothing shades empty and reads zero; it is never filled in from the round before.

The cards, totalled

The judges’ final totals, the media’s cards beside them, and how these judges usually score. Their round-by-round 10–9s are with the rounds above.

Official card

Unanimous Decision

Referee · Kerry Hatley
Dricus Du PlessisKamaru Usman
Official totals — Dricus Du Plessis first
JudgeTotal
Michael Bell49–46
Sal D'Amato2.1 avg spread · 46% wide50–45
David Sutherland49–46

Each judge’s round-by-round scores sit with the round they belong to, in the round-by-round section above — switch a round there and the three cards for it change with the stats.

Media cards — 13 scored, Dricus Du Plessis first · unofficial

Unattributed50–45
Plessis Dayne Fox Sherdog.com50–45
Sheehan SevereMMA.com49–45
Plessis Nolan King MMAJunkie.com49–45
Plessis Steve Duncan mma.uno49–45
Plessis CombatPress.com49–46
Unattributed49–46
Unattributed49–46
Plessis Keith Shillan Sherdog.com49–46
Plessis Ryan Frederick WrestlingObserver.com49–46
Plessis Jose Youngs MMAFighting.com49–46
Plessis Matthew Wells MMAJunkie.com48–47
Unattributed48–47

Fan vote · unofficial

50-45 Du Plessis · 34%49-46 Du Plessis · 25%50-44 Du Plessis · 21%48-47 Du Plessis · 7%49-45 Du Plessis · 6%

282 fan cards submitted to MMA Decisions.

Official cards come from the UFCStats fight record and MMA Decisions. Media cards and the fan vote are MMA Decisions’ own collection and are not official. Judge tendency figures are that judge’s whole recorded history, not this bout — they are context for how a card was scored, never a claim that it was scored wrongly.

Takedowns

Takedowns

The level change — head to head

Career UFC takedown rates. Red corner left, blue corner right.

Dricus Du Plessis

2.22takedowns / 15 min
2.22 / 15m
TAKEDOWNS
2.79 / 15m
4.35 / 15m
ATTEMPTS
6.34 / 15m
51%
ACCURACY
44%
0.70 / 15m
SUB ATT
0.10 / 15m

Kamaru Usman

2.79takedowns / 15 min

Career UFC takedown rates exactly as UFCStats publishes them: takedowns landed per 15 minutes, completion rate, submission attempts per 15 minutes, and the share of takedowns tried on them that they stuffed. Attempts per 15 is the one derived figure — landed ÷ completion rate — and it is omitted wherever either input is missing. UFCStats writes 0% where no attempt was recorded at all, so a percentage of exactly zero reads “n/a” here rather than as a measured rate. “Field” is the average fighter in that weight class, or across every division where a class is too small to average. Rate bars run to the population’s 95th percentile (6.86 takedowns / 15m); a fighter above it pins the bar. Percentages are drawn on their own axis.

Ranked in Middleweight

The market story

What the market did on the way to the cage — the price, not our model. The gold marker is where our pick was frozen.

Dricus Du PlessisKamaru UsmanPolymarketSportsbook consensus (vig removed)
Dricus Du Plessis vs Kamaru Usman — implied win chance over timeLine chart. Market-implied win chance for Dricus Du Plessis and Kamaru Usman from Jul 07 to Jul 18, drawn from Polymarket and the sportsbook consensus. Dricus Du Plessis moves from 70% to 66% and Kamaru Usman from 30% to 34%. A gold marker sits at the first snapshot in this window — our pick was frozen before the window opened, not at that price.0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%Jul 7Jul 10Jul 13Jul 15Jul 18▲ we passed here (toss-up)66%34%

Dricus Du Plessis's implied chance drifted down from 70% to 66% (−5.0pp) over this window. Our pick was frozen at the model cutoff, before this window opened — so the gold marker sits at the first snapshot we hold, not at a price we were reacting to.

Our published call had Dricus Du Plessis at 54.3%. At the last price we captured before the fight, the de-vigged market had him at 65.5% — our number sat 11.2pp below the market’s. Two numbers, side by side. How our calls have actually done is the public record, not one bout.

Show the numbers
SeriesOpenLowHighLast captureMove
Dricus Du Plessis — sportsbook consensus71.9%66.3%95.0%66.3%−5.5pp
Kamaru Usman — sportsbook consensus28.1%5.0%33.7%33.7%+5.5pp
Dricus Du Plessis — Polymarket70.5%65.5%72.0%65.5%−5.0pp
Kamaru Usman — Polymarket29.5%28.0%34.5%34.5%+5.0pp
Price history from Polymarket (moneyline, both corners) and BestFightOdds (sportsbook consensus, vig removed). 2,297 snapshots on file · window Jul 07 20:12Jul 18 15:00Z · last capture Jul 18, 15:00Z · hourly-downsampled for the chart · read at build time from the price archive, not a live feed.
← Back to the public record