This all-important debut moment wasn’t the first time the pandemic had thwarted him. “I was super unprepared,” Du Plessis says now, looking back on that first fight. “Gyms were closed in South Africa. We were in a hard lockdown. That was basically the fight that I was the most unprepared for in my whole life. I had 10 days’ notice, we were at home, we weren’t allowed to train at the gym. I had my garage and my gym at the house, but you’re not training with your team, you’re not sparring, you’re not doing all that.

“But, you know, I got the call. What are you going to say? That call only comes once.”

He’d made due as best he could, bringing in teammates to train at home, before making the long journey north to the island. Now, finally there, standing in the Octagon with this new chapter about to begin, he told himself he would find a way. He had to find a way. “My mindset just went to, ‘Listen, yes, you’re not prepared for this fight. But in another way, you’ve been preparing for this fight for the past 10 years,’” he remembers. “So, I went in there and I knew I had to put on a performance, get this guy out of there as quickly as possible, go out there and do what I do, use all the sacrifice. Everything that I’ve done ’til this point has to pay off now. Losing was just not an option.

“I walked into that Octagon for the first time like I’d prepared for three months like a madman. That wasn’t the case, but that was my mindset. Because that’s what it takes.”

It took Du Plessis three minutes and 22 seconds to knock Perez out, stunning him with a short left hook. He walked out of the Octagon having rearranged the numbers that had tested him — 10 days became 1-0, his newly minted UFC record.

“Man, that was actually incredible,” he says of what the night meant to him at the time. “I just remember getting back to my hotel room after everything settled and thinking, ‘Wow, this just happened.’ I mean, my life was never the same after that.”

In the years since that victory, Du Plessis has had more than a few chances to author even better moments on even bigger stages. But none greater than the one waiting for him this Saturday. It’s then, under the Scotiabank Arena lights in Toronto, that Du Plessis — now 30, and still undefeated since that night on the island — will get his first shot at the UFC middleweight championship. Much like the rest of his journey in the sport, the path that’s brought him to this career-defining opportunity has been a tumultuous one. But, as always, Du Plessis arrives seemingly unmoved by the weight of the moment, and ready to prove, once again, that he already knows something the rest of the world is about to find out.

Up to that point, the only athletic path Du Plessis had considered was a career in rugby. But unexpectedly making history for his country caused the young fighter to pause, to wonder if his calling lay off the pitch. “This had never happened before for South Africa. So, that’s when I realized,” he says. “I took a step back and said, ‘Listen, there’s something special here. There’s an opportunity here.’ … As soon as that world championship happened, as an amateur, I thought to myself, ‘You can be a good rugby player. Maybe great. But, you know, you can be a phenomenal fighter. You can be the greatest the world’s ever seen. You could do something that’s never been done before.’

“That was how I made my choice. I wanted to be exceptional.”

As he rose through the kickboxing ranks, Du Plessis kept one eye on the MMA scene. By the time he’d claimed that world title, he was already mulling next steps. “By that stage, when I was 14 or 15, when I started training at K-1, I was already in love with mixed martial arts, just from movies and watching videos. I just loved it. And that love never went away.” Hungry for a greater challenge, Du Plessis was hooked by the added complexity of MMA. “MMA was what got me into [combat sports] and so passionate about it, because you can be the best striker in the world — if I get you on the floor, you’re done. You could be the best wrestler in the world, but if I’m kicking you in the head, you’re done. That was always the way that I saw this, as being a complete fighter.

“After I became a world champion [under K-1 rules], I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I had my first professional fight six months after that, at the age of 19 in the EFC.”

Success again mounted quickly for Du Plessis as he waded into MMA. His EFC debut ended in a TKO victory, one minute and 18 seconds into the first round. He fought two more times that same year, 2013, earning a pair of submission wins that turned his hot start into a win streak. By the same time the next year, after stretching that streak to 4-0 with a second TKO, Du Plessis found himself on another meteoric ascent, the young phenom granted the first title shot of his MMA career against the far more experienced Garreth McLellan. But there, just for a moment, the momentum ground to a halt. Du Plessis submitted to a guillotine choke in the third round, his shot at the belt fading to black.

“It felt like the end of the world when I lost that fight. It was my first loss in full-contact combat sports in my whole life,” Du Plessis says. “I thought, ‘My life is over.’ … I was 19 years old when I signed that fight. And I was fighting a guy who, just after that fight, fought in the UFC. And that was his title defence. I was young, very young — I had four professional fights, he had [13]. But you know, that was a good thing. That was throwing me into the deep end, and seeing if I’d sink or swim. Unfortunately, I didn’t come out and win it. But winning that fight would’ve done a lot more damage than good. Because I realized the difference between a journeyman, somebody who does this as a sport, and somebody who does this for a career.

“I was still studying in university then. You know, I was a young guy, I was always very focused, I wasn’t distracted — I thought I was working hard — but I didn’t realize how hard I should be working. After that fight, I realized. I made the switch to, ‘You can’t do this if you want to be the best in the world. You have to live this if you want to be the best in the world.’”

Du Plessis returned to the ring six months later, clawing his way back into the win column with another submission. He reeled off seven more victories after that, and claimed a belt in each of the next three years — winning the EFC welterweight championship in 2016, the EFC middleweight championship in 2017, and the KSW welterweight championship in 2018.

“A loss makes or breaks people,” he says of what changed for him after the McLellan fight. “That’s all the motivation in the world to never let that happen again, to give everything in training, do everything you possibly can to never feel like that again. I’ve had another loss since, and it felt exactly the same.

“Losing is part of life — it doesn’t mean you have to like it. You have to deal with it, you have to be able to conquer it, to get back up stronger and keep on going. That is a fact. But it doesn’t mean you have to like it. And I absolutely hate it.”

One win, and a shot at the belt awaits. But the man in front of Du Plessis wouldn’t go away easily.

“When you talk about ‘The Reaper,’ Robert Whittaker, you talk about a guy that — if not for Israel Adesanya — we’d be talking about him in historical terms,” former UFC Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight Champion Daniel Cormier said on the broadcast, as Du Plessis and Whittaker circled each other early. “Because he would’ve had that belt for almost 10 years at this point. He’s beaten everybody else.”

By the middle of the second round, the script had flipped. Du Plessis’ streak had survived. And as Whittaker steadied himself against the mat and the cage, caked in blood and trying to catch his breath, there was Du Plessis bounding to the other side of the Octagon, arms raised again.

“There is no doubting the South African now!” Jon Anik bellowed on the broadcast. “Now 6-0, [he] punctuates the winning streak by stopping Robert Whittaker, as he’d said, inside of two rounds.

“Title fight next.”

In the moment, it seemed like there was simply no stopping Du Plessis. He was a runaway train powering toward a long-awaited meeting with Adesanya, perhaps a pinnacle moment for the underdog contender. But as has seemed to be the case at many of the key moments of Du Plessis’ career, fate couldn’t help but intervene. Like his very first fight in the organization, the one that was to be his biggest delivered a roller-coaster ride of last-minute twists.

Recovering from a foot injury sustained during camp in the leadup to the Whittaker fight, and faced with the proposition of returning to the Octagon just two months after his battle with The Reaper — and after having fought three times in the seven months prior — Du Plessis was forced to move to the sidelines and bide his time. In his place, the title shot against Adesanya went to Anaheim, Calif., native Sean Strickland, fresh off a two-fight win streak after dropping two-straight before that.

When Strickland and Adesanya came face-to-face at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena in September 2023, Du Plessis had to watch as another underdog, Strickland, shocked the world, upset the champ, and lived out Du Plessis’ moment — the American overcome with emotion as Dana White wrapped that glistening championship belt around his waist.

Now, half a year after he established himself as the true No. 1 contender and four months after he watched Strickland take the throne, Du Plessis is finally getting his shot.

“Nothing about this is easy,” he says, reflecting on his journey over the past three years. “You have to get up every day, whether you’re hurting, when there’s injury. There’s a lot of things happening — you know, ever since I signed with the UFC, there have been long layoffs for me because of Covid, where I couldn’t fight. But now I’ve finally found my shot.

“And it’s about staying positive, believing. That’s what it is for me — every struggle became a strength. Every time something bad happened, I turned it into a weapon, and I stayed motivated.”

That this pivotal moment will come against Strickland, who seems to court controversy every time he approaches a microphone and has aimed plenty of bile at Du Plessis to this point, means Saturday night figures to be even more of a spectacle. Fight fans were already granted a preview of the animosity a month ago, when the pair came to blows in the audience at UFC 296, Strickland theatrically clearing the crowd between him and Du Plessis before launching himself at the South African.

But while the bad blood between the two may raise the stakes for those watching from outside the Octagon, for the man set to meet Strickland inside it, the path forward remains the same.

“My mindset has not changed. What I think of him hasn’t changed, even a little,” Du Plessis says of the altercation’s aftermath. “I do feel a bit more sorry for him — I think he’s mentally a lot weaker than I originally thought. But in terms of my mindset, absolutely nothing changes. In terms of my mindset, it’s never personal. It’s always business. The fact of what happened, it could have been the exact opposite — he could have been the nicest guy, the most respectful guy on Earth. It wouldn’t have changed my mindset when that cage door closes.

“You could be my friend — if we are fighting each other, there is no friendship. You can be my enemy — when I fight, there is no enemy. There’s just an object between me and my goals.”

Six months ago, the last time Du Plessis stood inside the Octagon, his arms raised, the world at his feet, wearing the marks of the greatest win of his career, the South African looked into the camera and delivered seven words in his native Afrikaans to those watching back home: “Hulle weet nie wat ons weet nie.”

“They don’t know what we know.”

Now, on the cusp of a career-defining night that could potentially end with him becoming the first South African champion in UFC history, Du Plessis is holding those words close. Asked what the mantra means to him on the doorstep of what could either be his crowning moment or his greatest disappointment, he laid it out with a steely, immovable confidence:

“It means that I don’t think people realize what we are willing to do to get that win,” he says. “What we are willing to sacrifice, how far we are willing to go, to make sure we get that win. You know, it’s easy to say it, but I live and breathe that saying.

“People don’t know what I’m willing to do to get that win.”