Dricus Du Plessis just steamrolled Kamaru Usman. Did you expect anything different? If you did, you probably hadn’t done your film work, because Usman has been a husk of himself for some time now.

He’s fought just four times in four years since losing the welterweight strap to Leon Edwards, and each performance has been less impressive than the last. Even his return to the win column last summer over Joaquin Buckley was quite ugly: he looked flustered and flat-footed. Fortunately for him, he was able to take Buckley down at will. But it would’ve been ludicrous to expect him to replicate that same success while moving up to middleweight against a unit like Dricus Du Plessis.

Even at the height of his powers, though, Kamaru Usman’s game was remarkably simple. He was never the slickest striker, nor was he a wizard on the mat. Rather, he was a specimen. He had a massive frame for the weight class, a thudding one-two, and a relentless will to press forward. Go back and watch his first title defense against Colby Covington—he’s just tanking the shots. 

This isn’t a referendum on Usman’s legacy—he won 15 consecutive fights that way, tied for the third-longest streak in UFC history–but few fighters were more primed to feel the effects of father time than Kamaru Usman. Five years ago, he was the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world. Now he’s a 39-year-old man with bad knees. This past Saturday, he plodded around the octagon with a limited striking arsenal and no ability to impose his grappling, and he was lit up accordingly.

Still, this version of Usman isn’t a walkover. He managed to muzzle a middle-of-the-pack welterweight like Joaquin Buckley only a year ago. At the very least, this fight was a reaffirmation of what we had already known: Dricus Du Plessis is, in fact, elite. He barrels forward, and if you can’t get out of harm’s way or stop him in his tracks entirely, he will run you over. That’s been on display his entire career. It didn’t prove much beyond that.

On paper, Dricus Du Plessis rebounded from a humiliating loss to Khamzat Chimaev and put up a dominant 50-45 win against a former champion and future Hall of Famer. Powerful enough, right? Yet, despite having Usman out on his feet numerous times over five rounds, Dricus never found a finish, whether out of respect, contempt, or sheer incompetence. 

Are you impressed? Did we learn anything? Most importantly, is Dricus Du Plessis any closer to the title than before? Not really, and he knows it. Asked about his next fight, he pointed to Imavov instead of himself: “Strickland said he’d be ready in December. He should fight Imavov and get a title defense. [Imavov’s] earned that.” Then he added: “After that, I’ll get my belt back.”

I wouldn’t hold any of this against Dricus if he hadn’t lobbied for this fight so aggressively. “He has a win over Sean Strickland, he had that very close fight with Khamzat Chimaev, and that’s why I wanted this fight,” Du Plessis told MMA Fighting. “People are going to be like, ‘OK, we know you can strike, what about the wrestling and grappling?’ I want to go out there and prove what I’ve done.” 

Nothing was proven.