UFC 305 Technical Breakdown: This is why DDP keeps getting away with it

Dricus Du Plessis somehow makes all his mistakes irrelevant while capitalizing on his opponents' errors.

The Intangibles

It’s easy in fight analysis to focus on the nuts and bolts of technique. After all, that’s what we can see, that’s what is objective. There’s a right way to throw a punch, and then there’s Dricus Du Plessis windmilling his arms around while galloping at his opponent.

But there’s more to fighting than what can be learned from instructionals. There’s heart, determination, durability, recoverability, stamina, calm under pressure, the ability to stay healthy, and many more hard to quantify factors that end up determining fights a lot more than we’d probably like to admit.

The middleweight champion seems to have a healthy supply of many of these intangibles, and they undoubtedly played a big role in him finding a way to finish Israel Adesanya in the fourth round of their UFC 305 main event.

What tends to happen is that these qualities are underemphasized in pre-fight analysis, but then immediately following the fight, people turn to these intangibles to explain away everything that didn’t go according to expectation.

Ultimately though, that’s because the underlying technical issues aren’t as apparent on first watch, which is why it’s important to dissect the fight more thoroughly.

What we see when we do that is, yes, Dricus Du Plessis has those underappreciated qualities that make up for his technical deficiencies. But also, Israel Adesanya just has enough of his own shortcomings that a smart, determined, and durable fighter can exploit.

Outkicking Adesanya

In my preview, I put a lot of emphasis on the kicking battle, having observed that a common factor in Adesanya’s losses was an opponent well-prepared to defend against his kicks.

However, that didn’t end up being all that important. This was due in part because Stylebender’s approach relied much more heavily on his boxing. It’s likely that he felt that throwing a lot of kicks would create more chances for DDP to take him down.

Still, we can give some credit here to Du Plessis for implementing a high-volume kicking strategy that I thought might have some success. The official stats say that Adesanya threw only 9 leg strikes this fight, compared to the average of 8 per round across the rest of his UFC career. Du Plessis, on the other hand, threw 29 low kicks.

Dricus Du Plessis’s kicks may not have been as damaging as Adesanya’s, but they were much more frequent.

It doesn’t appear that his kicks did much damage to Adesanya, but they scored. More importantly, they might have played a role in limiting how many kicks came back at him.

Adesanya’s primary defense against the kicks was to pull his lead leg back from low kicks and to block head and body kicks. He caught one high kick and checked a low kick once, but much more often he just let DDP get off kicks for free.

The end result of the kicking range being competitive is that the striking was actually pretty closely contested, even in the third round where Izzy did his best work.

While Adesanya didn’t throw as many low kicks as we’re used to seeing in his recent fights, he did land a handful of them as well as some nice open-side body kicks from southpaw.

Adesanya had some success with his low kicks and southpaw body kicks, but they weren’t as much of a factor as expected.

While the threat of the takedown and Du Plessis’s high volume of kicks might both have played a role in limiting the former champ’s dynamic kicking game, the success he had when he did kick makes me feel like there’s more to it than that.

Low kicks are one of the safest ways to pick at an opponent looking to wrestle and DDP didn’t have enough success with his kicks to make me think that Adesanya was overwhelmed by them.

Whether because it was the plan set forward by his coaches or whether he simply fell into this strategy throughout the course of the fight, Adesanya was just simply looking to box more than kick in this fight.

I think that was a mistake.

As we’ll see shortly, DDP’s primary way of landing punches is to sprint forward into range, so a steady diet of low kicks would have quickly taken some of the spring out of his step and teeps to intercept the blitzes could have halted his momentum.

Additionally, against an opponent who constantly switches stances, there are plenty of opportunities to attack him while he’s in the middle of shifting, catching him either on one leg or with a square stance.

Since Du Plessis didn’t show an ability to check any of the kicks that Izzy did throw, it’s hard to imagine that this wouldn’t have been successful. Yet, Adesanya mostly left his kicks holstered.

Running into Trouble

While Sean Strickland and Alex Pereira were able to close down the elusive Nigerian by pressuring him to the cage, Dricus Du Plessis had a different plan for getting the fight into close quarters.

DDP hung out at range and kicked with Adesanya, and then when he wanted to put some thudding punches on him, he used big shifting footwork to get inside. Calling it shifting is a nice way to say he just abandoned his stance and ran at Izzy.

Dricus Du Plessis covered distance by running forward with his punches, eschewing any semblance of a steady stance in favor of closing as much distance as he could, and as quickly as he could.

Running at your opponent with punches isn’t supposed to work. Boxers train diligently to maintain their stance at all times, ensuring that they’re always firmly rooted and prepared to take a punch.

But Du Plessis got away with it because Adesanya never made him pay. Rather than DDP getting into trouble for constantly having his feet off the ground and/or bringing them together, more often his blitzes just forced Izzy to make footwork errors of his own and get punished for it.

Adesanya’s evasive footwork was mostly limited to shifting stances while moving backward and darting away at an angle. This is actually what his corner encouraged him to keep doing before sending him back out for the fourth round.

This footwork maneuver can look catlike when it works and DDP goes sailing past, but there are two major issues with it. First, this being his default response to the blitzing combinations meant that he wasn’t putting himself in a position to counter.

Knowing that Adesanya wasn’t going to punish him for the blitzes, DDP just kept extending the combination and running his retreating opponent down with punches.

A few times we saw the former champ stand his ground and avoid the clumsy rushing punches with some slick head movement, which resulted in DDP sailing by and looking foolish. But even then, Izzy didn’t attack him at the moment of vulnerability, so it still didn’t do anything to dissuade further charges.

Second, he routinely brought his feet together while darting away, momentarily abandoning a sturdy stance, which led to him getting hurt later in the fight (more on this later).

The Grappling

Perhaps the most predictable aspect of the fight was that Du Plessis was able to take the second round due to his grappling advantages.

Adesanya did have success defending the takedowns in open space as Du Plessis’s wrestling entries continue to be lackluster, but the champ made use of a well timed reactive takedown to get the fight to the mat.

Du Plessis struggled to take Adesanya with his shots in open space, but he managed to secure round-winning control in the second with a reactive takedown and a low single during a chaotic exchange.

There’s not much to critique about Du Plessis’s first successful takedown. He ducked underneath Adesanya’s jab and timed him perfectly with a double leg. And it was impressive that, despite Adesanya quickly using his overhook to work his way back to his feet, Du Plessis transitioned to a body lock that extended the exchange and prevented the escape.

Adesanya’s urgency to get back to his feet exposed his back, but it was a fair gamble given that settling in bottom position would have certainly conceded the round entirely.

Du Plessis’s biggest mistake in the first grappling sequence was being overly eager to attack the choke, even when he had secured a very dominant cross-body riding position against the fence.

He could have landed some serious ground and pound while controlling Izzy’s wrist there, but instead he went for the choke while only having one hook in. Izzy then peeled the one hook off and reversed position.

DDP locked up the second round when his mastery of chaos got Izzy back to the ground. Izzy was unleashing combinations on him against the fence, but DDP dipped down to throw a wild overhand, winged his head into Adesanya’s hips, and face-planted onto a low single.

When Adesanya turned to his base to stand up, DDP jumped on the rear waistlock, which he used to force a grappling battle for the remainder of the round. Izzy’s inability to deal with the rear waist lock was the biggest issue in his defensive grappling.

He showed no urgency in fighting the grip and even when he did, he didn’t immediately dig the underhooks he needed to stop DDP from just regaining the body lock.

Even though DDP won by submission, his grappling offense wasn’t why he won this fight but it did win him the second round on the scorecards.

Adesanya’s Boxing Makes a Return

Even though he was down on the judges’ scorecards, most people watching live felt like the momentum was shifting in Adesanya’s favor, and that was due largely to the success he had with his boxing in the third round.

His boxing approach was built on his use of the “sticky” jab (a term Connor Ruebusch coined). This is a version of the jab where, rather than immediately retracting the jab, you leave it extended, either to blind your opponent or to use as a frame.

Adesanya’s boxing success was built off his “sticky” jab.

This worked exceptionally well against Du Plessis because his default defense is to shell up behind a high guard. Adesanya extended his lead hand, either sticking it through DDP’s forearms and into his face or putting it firmly on his chest. Then, while DDP was distracted up high, Izzy could unload with body shots under the elbows.

The body shots are why people thought the momentum was shifting. Adesanya looked like the fresher fighter at the end of the third while DDP looked exhausted.

However, despite Adesanya’s success with the sticky jab, he still wasn’t using his jab defensively to interrupt Du Plessis’s blitzes or counter his kicks. I thought that Adesanya would pick up where Sean Strickland left off with his jab, but generally Izzy was just using his jab to distract to set up his combinations rather than as a damaging weapon in its own right.

Izzy had a few other crafty setups with his boxing, including an sneaky uppercut that consistently found the gap in DDP’s guard.

Izzy also used his uppercut to split the guard of DDP and punish his dips.

The uppercut was also likely a planned attack given DDP’s propensity for dipping down as well as posing a grappling threat.

All of Izzy’s success with his hands didn’t take the fight into a territory where the champ couldn’t compete. Izzy was getting the better of the striking in the third, but he wasn’t putting much distance, literally or metaphorically, between himself and his opponent.

Building to the Finish

While it felt like DDP just manifested a finish out of nowhere, in reality, there were two big areas where he consistently found success that eventually culminated in a finishing sequence.

First, the South African was increasingly countering Adesanya. This is part of the reason why it didn’t make sense for the challenger to rely so heavily on his boxing, but it also shows the gameness of the champion.

DDP was undeterred by Izzy’s success and never let his will to take shots and fire back flag.

Du Plessis was finding counters on Adesanya more and more in the lead up to the finish.

It’s clear that Du Plessis is an authoritative puncher, which makes his fondness for winging wild, looping shots even more baffling. He just doesn’t have to throw very hard to do damage, and the sooner he realizes this the sooner he’ll develop into quite a formidable puncher.

DDP’s counters prevented Izzy from running away with the fight, then he clearly hurt Adesanya with a clean left hook counter to the jab moments before the finish.

The second area where Du Plessis was building towards the finish was in his blitzes from southpaw.

We saw earlier that he ran forward with punches to close the distance, but when he initiated those charges from southpaw, he typically did it behind one or two jabs.

I mentioned in the preview that his southpaw jab could play a factor in this fight and he used it quite well while advancing on Izzy to catch him leaning back. As Adesanya became more aware of the threat of the southpaw jab, his leaning and retreating footwork became more exaggerated.

On top of that, DDP continued to extend these exchanges the way that he did with his other blitzing offenses, adding more jabs and looping shots aimed at catching Izzy when he tried to exit on an angle. It was exactly those shots that started the finishing sequence.

The southpaw jab played an important part in punishing Adesanya’s predictable responses to Du Plessis’ blitzes.

Again, we have to note just how problematic Adesanya’s lack of counters was. Without any fear of return fire, DDP became bolder with his galloping attacks, eventually catching an off-balance Izzy in the fourth.

While making innumerable mistakes in his own footwork, Dricus Du Plessis made Adesanya’s poor footwork the key to the victory.

How long will he keep getting away with it?

People have attributed Dricus Du Plessis’s success to several factors, including an allegedly keen eye for strategy. After this fight, I’m not so sure.

DDP has a number of those intangibles that add up to creating a difficult problem to deal with. He’s incredibly durable, seemingly tireless despite a horribly inefficient style that makes him appear gassed in every fight, and he hits like a truck.

He also just never quits thinking that he’s going to win the fight. Never for a minute did it look like DDP was second-guessing himself in this fight.

Those factors just him in the fight long enough for one of his opponent’s catastrophic failures to materialize. His attributes minimize the importance of his shortcomings while maximizing his ability to punish his opponent’s.

DDP makes a million mistakes, but if his opponent doesn’t make him pay for them, does it matter?

In this fight, DDP made the footwork mistake of bringing his feet together far more times than Adesanya did, but he was never getting attacked when he was doing that. DDP is always doing something, which means over the course of the fight, he’s more likely to eventually fit the square peg through the circle hole.

So the answer: Dricus Du Plessis will keep getting away with it, as long as his opponents keep letting him.