A good week for Dricus du Plessis

A good week for Dricus du Plessis

Dricus du Plessis became an overnight national sensation at the weekend, winning the middleweight title in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a marketing business that promotes mixed martial arts (MMA), a euphemism for barroom brawling (sans the broken bottles and chairs). Du Plessis, 30, defeated Californian Sean Strickland, 32, a former UFC middleweight champion who once attacked his apparently abusive father with a guitar, supposedly to protect his mother. Du Plessis’s upbringing was more conventional: judo as a laaitie, then wrestling and kickboxing before following the money to MMA.