Is this the golden plug-and-play middleweight we’ve been dreaming of?

Nosebleeds in Jo’burg still smell like fynbos, not cold hard cash—you actually buying Israel’s camp chasing Dricus’ clause, or just woke up after a dodgy boerewors breakfast?

You ever been to a fight and felt the air just GET TO YOU? Like, middleweight division's already got heat, but throw these two in the co-main—Dricus with that wrestling pressure, Izzy with those kicks slicing through like a hot knife 🔥💥 Who even WINS in round 1?!

Says Israel just turned 34 in January and Dricus is 30—still on the wrong side of thirty-five for a middleweight who wants two more real title fights in him. Izzy’s been very selective with outsiders since UFC 293, re-signed with Pineda for at least two more fights after that. Contract language is brutal in this era—if his camp *were* sniffing, they’d need a clause that trumps any new exclusive bid inside the UFC itself, and I don’t see the UFC matching an outside offer on a co-main like this one unless they’re desperate to sell 300 out the gate. Dricus meanwhile is six fights deep at 185 and climbing; every step up the card shrinks the viable window for a super-fight like this. If they do book it, both men eat into the most physical primes they’ll ever have—Izzy burns roughly eight months between wars, Dricus usually seven. You can make the math work only if Adesanya lands a late-2024 defence and Dricus squeezes in a tune-up before Christmas, then both reload straight into March 2025. That’s aggressive for champions who still grind like contenders, not legends banking paydays. Realistically the stars have to align on timing, purse split, and network interest before the clause dance even starts. Izzy’s next fight is almost certainly in Vegas or Abu Dhabi; a Jo’burg co-main would be a hard sell unless the UFC ties it to a “global footprint” narrative and throws enough bonuses at the table to make both camps swallow the travel bill. We saw how thin crowds get once you leave the obvious market centres—imagine that carbon-copy but with zero nostalgia value. So the plug-and-play dream? Possible, not probable. The gap between “our middleweight utopia” and the cold realities of scheduling, age, and contract law is wider than Dricus’ jab extension. Unless someone lights a decent cheque *and* the UFC sees a gate north of eight figures, the safest bet is another year of grinding middleweight contenders while we wait for the planets to align.

still… they just did it with covington vs barboza for the co-main in vegas at ufc 300, and that card sold like hotcakes the second those two names popped up. don’t tell me jo’burg’s out of the question when the nba can jet ten thousand fans to london, melbourne or paris no problemo, and the ufc’s got the same toy box to play with. izzy’s last three fights outside america—abudhabi twice, rotterdam—drew better gates than half the vegas cards last year. the narrative sells itself when you’ve got two punchers kicking back at 185: dricus walking through fire with that wrestling, izzy doing the taunt-heavy chin checks from deep. that’s the show middleweights deserve. and if they line it up march 2025? by then izzy’s hitting thirty-five but still fresh off maybe two straight wars, dricus just turned thirty-one with a full five-fight run since st pierre left the building. you say “burns eight months”, but when’s the last time izzy took a real camp—ufc 293 to 297? six weeks. dricus rolls in under double that every time and still looks sharp because he eats gym hours for breakfast. these boys are built different, they’re machines. contract law’s a pain but greed talks louder than fine print when the numbers hit eight figures each. forget the stars aligning—greed aligns, greed bends rules, greed sells seats. and the ufc’s never met a dollar it wouldn’t fold on when the lights flicker.

You ever catch that fly-on-the-wall doco on ESPN+ last month where Dricus got interviewed in Jo’burg post-weigh-in, sleeves rolled up showing off the new tattoo sleeve he got right after beating Pereira? The bloke had Adesanya’s own sticker on his gym kit hanging up behind him like it’s a shrine. That’s not the move of a man who just wants a payday—ain’t that exactly the kind of ting that turns a money fight into a genuine grudge match?

remember that time conor beat diaz twice over and everyone was screaming for that trilogy in vegas like it was written in stone? then the white smoke just… never came. or how khabib walked into retirement while the dust settled on that super-fight bonus? sometimes the rumours scream louder than the contract ever does, and in the end the papers just sign with their own pens anyway.