Morne Visser still has not gotten over Dricus Du Plessis‘ loss to Khamzat Chimaev.
Du Plessis (23-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) lost his middleweight title to Chimaev at UFC 319 in dominant fashion after he was outgrappled for the vast majority of the fight. Chimaev (15-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) controlled Du Plessis on the ground for more than 21 minutes and took him down 12 times.
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Visser went off on Chimaev’s game plan and accused him of avoiding the fight.
“We’ve made small, small mistakes that cost us dearly every minute of every round in that fight,” Visser said on Fight Forecast. “So, easy, easy fixes. We were just not prepared. It sounds stupid what I’m going to say now, but we were not prepared. We’ve never been prepared to fight a guy who’s not willing to fight. If we knew he was going to try to just do that, I would have changed Dricus’ base. No punches, no kicks, just flipping wrestle the guy, and Dricus is good enough to do that.
“But it’s an MMA fight. You guys saw how quickly he shoots. He doesn’t want to stand up. Dricus kicked him once and hit him once, and he felt like a truck hit him. So, he wanted to just keep Dricus on the floor. Plus, when he kept Dricus on the floor, he never wanted to fight. I know Marc Goddard doesn’t agree with me. … (He) should have stood that fight up many, many times. There were many, many dead positions in that fight where he was on Dricus like a blanket. He didn’t want to fight.”
If Du Plessis gets a chance to run things back with Chimaev, Visser vows the outcome would be different.
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“It looked like if we knew nothing on the floor,” Visser said. “I must be honest. We knew nothing about how to get a blanket off us. But this time around, he’s going to get f*cked up. Look, he’s got zero chance against Dricus with the stand up. Zero. He’s got zero chance with Dricus in the clinch. His only chance is to keep us on the floor.
“So that’s the only thing we need to fix. And if you look back at the fight, people keep saying, ‘Ah, you don’t know how to wrestle.’ That’s the only thing he did. He only had to hold onto Dricus for 25 minutes to win the fight. That’s what he did, so he did his job well. We’ll make sure that will never, ever happen again.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Dricus Du Plessis’ coach says Khamzat Chimaev ‘didn’t want to fight’
