Dricus Du Plessis Delays 205 Move, Keeping the Betting Focus on Middleweight

Dricus Du Plessis is not taking the quickest route to light heavyweight. The Mac Life reported that his coach, Morne Visser, rejected a UFC proposal made three weeks earlier for Du Plessis to enter a four-man, one-night tournament at 205 pounds with Jiri Prochazka, Magomed Ankalaev and Navajo Stirling, with the winner eventually facing Carlos Ulberg; the same report placed Du Plessis’ targeted middleweight return in late February or March and noted that the UFC has not publicly confirmed the proposal.

That decision matters because it narrows Du Plessis’ immediate competitive path. His team still intends to move him to light heavyweight eventually, but the stated priority is to regain the middleweight title and defend it once. For bettors, the important development is not that Du Plessis refused one opportunity. It is that an abrupt change in weight class no longer appears to be the working assumption for his next fight.

There is still no booking, opponent or betting line attached to that plan. This is a change to the future handicap, not a wager by itself.

The middleweight version remains the relevant baseline

Du Plessis is 24-3 overall and ranked No. 2 at middleweight. He has gone 10-1 across the 11 UFC bouts in the PropBetEdge archive, with four knockout or TKO wins, two submissions and four decisions. His 60 percent finish rate applies specifically to those 10 archived wins; it should not be treated as a universal projection for an unannounced opponent or a different division.

His recent results also show why method and duration markets require more care than the headline finishing figure suggests. Three of his past five fights reached a five-round decision: wins over Kamaru Usman and Sean Strickland, plus the title loss to Khamzat Chimaev. His split-decision win over Strickland also went five rounds. The exception was a fourth-round submission of Israel Adesanya.