Dricus du Plessis isn’t giving any handouts during his title reign. Not to Sean Strickland, anyway.

The UFC middleweight title has been somewhat of a hot potato since Alex Pereira entered the promotion and threw the entire MMA access off-kilter. No one’s managed to defend the title since Pereira captured it in November 2022 against Israel Adesanya, who won it back and dropped it to Strickland before losing it to du Plessis at UFC 297 in January.

The split decision win was a competitive but not overly controversial one despite its close nature. Strickland has been the most vocal, of course, about an immediate rematch but didn’t get it as he rebounded with a split decision win over Paulo Costa at UFC 302 in June. Now, he has no intentions of fighting anyone who is not the champion. Unfortunately for him, du Plessis sees no reason to make “Tarzan” priority No. 1 after he defends against Adesanya at UFC 305 next Saturday.

“I don’t owe Sean anything,” du Plessis told Kevin Iole. “The rules are pretty clear. It’s scored round by round. The fact that it was a split decision is the biggest shocking factor for me. It was a very clear win for me. But like I said, it’s for me, the biggest fight is the fight that I want, the fight the fans want to see. At the end of the day, they are the ones that pay for the tickets, buy the pay-per-views and, you know, they are the ones that watch this sport. So obviously for me, fighting the Adesanya fight was by far the biggest fight that I could do. It’s probably the biggest fight of the year, one of them at least. The Strickland fight, sure. I mean, if that’s the fight that makes sense, that’s the fight that I’m going to fight.

“I would have had no problem in doing the rematch. I even told the UFC, I said, ‘There’s no problem.’ If they want to do the rematch, if ‘Izzy’ isn’t ready to fight or anything, Strickland rematch, I’m more than willing. Even in Vegas in his hometown. I have no problem with that. They decided to go without the Adesanya fight, which is great for me. Either way, it would have been great because both of them were big fights. Myself and Strickland would be even bigger the second time around. But I mean, this fight is huge. So yeah, after this, we’ll approach whatever comes after this, after this. But it will be interesting to see if Strickland’s even close to the conversation with the Kamzat Chimaev and Robert Whitaker fight happening soon.”

Strickland’s moderately underwhelming Costa win feels like a far cry to earn him his second-career shot at UFC gold. Seeing how long he’ll wait around will be a story in its own right with how historically active he’s been.

As du Plessis mentioned, Whittaker vs. Chimaev at UFC 308 in October is almost guaranteed to be a title eliminator as it was originally planned for UFC Saudi Arabia in June. Meanwhile, other wildcard options have been teased as recently as Wednesday’s Morning Report when lightweight champion Islam Makhachev’s coach, Javier Mendez, mentioned jumping to middleweight.

“StillKnocks” understandably laughed at the idea.

“Everybody can dream, right?” du Plessis responded to Mendez’s tease. “I always say, never cap your dreams. Dream big, but he’s dreaming real big. I’m very big (laughs).

“Of course, in this sport, everybody wants that. Especially after it’s been done. I completely understand going up to another division and fighting for another belt because there comes a stage where it makes sense and Makhachev right now, there’s people still left to fight. Listen, I’m not the one who’s going to say, no, not yet. I’m one, for one, saying, you have to at least, at the very least defend your belt three times, maybe four, depending on how the division looks. Defending about belt three times before even ever considering going up. Unless there is a special circumstance, which makes sense.”

A middleweight champion vs. lightweight champion matchup is certainly a fantastical one. What isn’t as crazy is the middleweight champion challenging the light heavyweight champion, which du Plessis has an interest in.

First order of business: Take out Adesanya, cement his legacy at 185 pounds then explore other title possibilities.

“I 100 percent agree that people win a belt and they immediately go, ‘I want a double [champ].’ You’re not Conor McGregor,” du Plessis said. “He was the first to do it, and he did it in spectacular fashion. He was the trendsetter. He was the pioneer in doing that. So now everybody tries to be like that. That’s not the case. I mean, I understand double champ. I also want to go and become a double champ in my career, but I’m not at all thinking about doing it anytime soon. The first [goal] is to be the most dominant middleweight in the world, and then going up a weight loss and then cementing that legacy over there.”