UFC 312 was short on star power but long on championship grit — especially from the two titleholders at the top of the card. Now that this trip to Sydney, Australia is in the books, let’s have a look at the five biggest takeaways from the UFC’s second pay-per-view of 2025.

1. Are we finally ready to admit that Dricus du Plessis is actually really good?

I know it doesn’t always look pretty. At times it looks downright ugly. But in Saturday's rematch with Sean Strickland, he left no doubt as to whether he deserves to be middleweight champion. The blood streaming from Strickland’s broken nose was just the exclamation point on the end of this statement win.

How does he do it? He looks like he’s tired but never actually gets tired. He looks slow but then smacks you with a spinning attack you wouldn’t even expect him to have in his toolbox. He’s won every UFC fight he’s been in and still the MMA world seems to have a hard time accepting that it’s not just dumb luck.

Let’s face it, du Plessis is the champ for a reason. And if he can defend his title against someone like Khamzat Chimaev later this year, it won’t be long before we might have to start thinking of him as one of the middleweight greats. As impossible as that idea may seem.

2. Strickland is a fighter with the virtues of his faults — and vice versa.

We know he’s tough. Anyone who can set his own broken nose in the middle of a round without even changing the expression on his face has earned that adjective. We also know he’s about as stubborn a human being as has ever stepped into the Octagon. You don’t make it this far on such modest athletic gifts without a sheer, unbreakable will.

Those traits kept him in this fight past the point where other men might have been polished off and put away. They also kept him from making any of the necessary adjustments that might have given him a real chance to win.

We heard coach Eric Nicksick speaking sense in Strickland’s corner all night long, asking for more activity early on, and then when he didn’t get it, more urgency and ferocity once time was running out. But Strickland just kept right on Strickland-ing. From the first minute on, it was as if he was committed to doing all the same things that lost him the first fight. If anything, he did slightly less of everything this time.

Before the fight he’s full of platitudes about fighting to the death. Then during the fight it’s like he thinks this is just the warm-up before the real contest begins. He doesn’t seem to have it in him to change approaches mid-fight or even just put his foot on the gas once he’s fallen behind. There’s only one setting on this man. And as long as "DDP" is around, it’s the setting that will keep him stuck in second place.

3. Underestimate Zhang Weili at your own peril, friends.

People thought she’d struggle with Tatiana Suarez’s wrestling. They thought she’d get taken down and worked on the mat. They had some reason to think it, since how can you expect someone who says she didn’t even start wrestling regularly until 2021 to fend off someone who’s been living that singlet life since childhood?

What they didn’t take into account is that Zhang isn’t just someone. She’s special. She might very well be the most well-rounded fighter we’ve ever seen in any of the women’s divisions. And you know what’s really crazy? Even at age 35, she’s still getting better.

Zhang spent the first few minutes of this fight stuck on her back after Suarez easily finished her first takedown attempt. It looked like everyone who’d predicted a triumph for good ol’ American wrestling was about to be proven right. But the champ stayed calm and figured it out before that opening round even ended. That first takedown wound up being the only one Suarez scored over the course of five rounds.

By the end, the fearsome unbeaten wrestler was a shocking 1 for 15 on takedown attempts. She also got out-landed 232 to 63 in total strikes. Mind you, that’s after coming in as the betting favorite with a perfect professional record.

It’s not that Suarez is bad. It’s just that Zhang is very, very good. As in, one of the best to ever do it in women’s MMA. If you can’t give her that respect now, what in the world would it possibly take?

4. We may not have a ton of good heavyweights, but at least we now have a brand new very big heavyweight.

Tallison Teixeira rumbled in there at 6-foot-7, dwarfing Justin Tafa. Lest we think he’s just some clumsy big man, he needed less than a minute to blitz Tafa with strikes that had the whole arena wincing in commiseration.

At 7-0 and just 25 years old, Teixeira provides a glimmer of hope in one of the sport’s shallowest (and oldest) divisions. Now we just need to see how he handles the next level of competition, since the top of the weight class is miles and miles away even from the middle.

5. If you missed the prelims and only have the time or energy to go back and watch one fight, make it Rong Zhu vs. Kody Steele.

I know it sounds like a matchup out of a video game, and it kind of was. Both guys threw technique out the window by the end, but who doesn’t love a good stand-and-bang show on the undercard?

It’s so hard to get noticed and be remembered amid the breakneck pace of today’s UFC. It’s especially hard on the prelim portion of a pretty low-wattage pay-per-view. Smashing each other into oblivion is one way to do it. This time it also earned both men a “Fight of the Night” bonus, which is good, since you’d hate to think of people putting themselves through that much pain and suffering for the meager payouts the UFC offers on those entry-level deals. Zhu might not be able to see out of both eyes for a few more days, but at least he’ll have some extra zeroes added to his check to go along with that win bonus.