Sean Strickland is sitting on the UFC middleweight title with Dricus du Plessis circling it again, after du Plessis turned down a UFC offer to join a four-man light heavyweight tournament. His coach, Morne Visser, said the team wants the 185-pound belt back first.
A four-man bracket to crown a 205-pound contender
Visser, head coach of Team CIT, said the UFC approached du Plessis about three weeks before his October 20 interview, so around late September. The promotion proposed a light heavyweight tournament with four fighters: du Plessis, Jiri Prochazka, Magomed Ankalaev, and New Zealand’s Navajo Stirling. The format called for two opening fights on the same night, with the winners then meeting each other. The tournament winner would have earned a title shot against light heavyweight champion Carlos Ulberg, who has been out since ACL surgery following the fight that won him the belt.
Ulberg took the title from Prochazka by knockout in April 2026, when the Czech fighter was defending his own championship. That loss is part of why Prochazka was in the proposed bracket, since a tournament win would have put him back in line for a rematch. Ankalaev currently has no announced fight, while Stirling remains undefeated through 14 professional bouts, 11 of them in the stretch that carried him into the UFC.
Why Visser turned it down
Visser laid out the reasoning on the Fight Forecast podcast, released October 20. He said it took roughly a year to build du Plessis up from welterweight to middleweight, and that simply adding weight would not be enough to make a jump to light heavyweight work without the right preparation. He chose to pass on the tournament and focus on getting the middleweight title back instead. “We want the belt back and we want to defend it once. And I made that clear to the UFC,” he said. He did not rule out a future move to 205 pounds, only after that goal is met, pointing to building real power rather than just adding mass.
Strickland holds the belt du Plessis has already beaten twice
Du Plessis lost the middleweight title to Khamzat Chimaev by unanimous decision at UFC 319 on August 17, 2025. Chimaev then lost it himself to Sean Strickland at UFC 328, an upset loss for the Chechen fighter. Du Plessis got back on track on July 19, 2026, dominating former two-time UFC welterweight champion Kamaru Usman by unanimous decision in Oklahoma City, a win that put him back in the title conversation. He already holds two career wins over Strickland from earlier in his run. The first made him middleweight champion in the first place, and the second came in a title rematch at UFC 312, a lopsided fight in which du Plessis broke Strickland’s nose. That history is part of why his team wants a third fight directly rather than a detour through light heavyweight.
Allen, Imavov and Chimaev also in the mix
Visser also addressed other possible opponents for du Plessis. He said there is a verbal agreement in principle with Brendan Allen, but that the UFC wants to see how Anthony Hernandez‘s November fight plays out before setting a date for that bout. He named Nassourdine Imavov as another option, since both fighters are coming off wins, though he stopped short of calling it a title-fight offer. Visser pushed back on the idea of an immediate rematch for Khamzat Chimaev, arguing a fighter coming off a loss should win again first before getting another title chance.
A return targeted for early 2027
Du Plessis is currently on his honeymoon, according to Visser, but has agreed to resume training in December. The camp’s target is to be ready by late February or March 2027, with no fight booked or officially announced by the UFC yet. The light heavyweight picture keeps moving without him in the meantime: Jiri Prochazka faces Navajo Stirling on November 21 at UFC Qatar, a fight that could reshuffle the division’s contenders even without the South African middleweight champion in the mix. A strong showing there could put the UFC’s tournament idea back on the table in some other form before the year is out.
