Morning Report | Kamaru Usman says Dricus du Plessis ‘rubbed me wrong’ with African champion controversy but welcomes him as fourth horseman

Kamaru Usman was not a fan of the original beef between Israel Adesanya and Dricus du Plessis.

Back in 2023, when Adesanya was still the UFC middleweight champion, “The Last Stylebender” got into a heated rivalry with then-rising contender du Plessis over the nature of being an African champion. Adesanya was part of the “Three Kings,” with Usman and Francis Ngannou, who held UFC titles and hailed from the African continent. But despite their heritage, du Plessis, who still lives in Africa, suggested Adesanya was not a true African champion, kicking off a feud that lasted until the two finally fought at UFC 305.

Ultimately, Adesanya and du Plessis squashed their beef, agreeing that all were African champions, but speaking with Adesanya recently on his YouTube channel, Kamaru Usman admits also took umbrage with du Plessis’s words.

“I’ll sum it up as this: it’s deep. It’s very, very deep,” Usman said. “It might go over a lot of people’s head. It’s very, very deep. But here’s the situation, and this is where it rubbed me wrong. Obviously I’m a black African American and I see how things are, I see how I’m treated, race or not, doesn’t matter. But this is what kind of got me.

“When you come in and there’s three African kings already, why is your mentality, why is your whole thought process not, ‘Man, I want to be the fourth African champion’? Why is it not I would like to be the fourth African champion? You chose to step into that limelight and come in on the direction of, ‘That guy, that guy, and that guy don’t live here anymore. They’re not African champions.’ And that’s the only thing that rubbed me wrong.”

Usman went on to say that he likes du Plessis, calling him “a good guy” from their run-ins over the years. And went so far as to speculate that the whole situation may have been a misunderstanding that got blown up, and that du Plessis turned to his advantage.

“To take it further, obviously you just get done with the fight or you’re doing media and you’re hyped, and you’ve got that camera in front of you and you start talking, you might not necessarily be saying or meaning things the way they come out,” Usman said. “… So he might not have necessarily meant it that way, but people ran with it. And he saw an opportunity. ‘This is an opportunity for me to get there and fight for that title.’ He built a storyline and he went out there, fought for the title, and power to him, we still have an African champion.

“We’ve moved on from the Three Kings, but that doesn’t mean we forget the Three Kings. We’ve moved on to now it’s four. Four Horsemen.”

As fate would have it, du Plessis is the only African fighter still holding a UFC title, with both Adesanya and Usman losing their belts, and Francis Ngannou leaving the promotion for the PFL. And for Usman, that puts du Plessis in an important position to carry the torch, which he hopes “Stillknocks” will do with a little more caution moving forward.

“Respect to him. I like the guy, and he’s a champion,” Usman said. “He’s still a champion, and he’s defending. He’s representing, and he’s writing the story, and he’s bringing in a whole new crop of guys. So much power, much respect. It’s just, with power comes responsibility, and you have to understand that anything you say and the way that you say things, people are going to grab onto it. It can be for the better or it can be for the worse, and that topic just happened to be something for the worse.”

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