Dricus Du Plessis Net Worth 2026: Purses, Bonuses and the KNOX Deal

Du Plessis became the first South African UFC champion on January 20, 2024 at UFC 297 in Toronto, taking a split decision (47-48, 48-47, 48-47) from Sean Strickland. He defended on August 17, 2024 at UFC 305 in Perth, submitting Israel Adesanya with a rear-naked choke at 3:38 of the fourth round, then shut out Strickland in the rematch at UFC 312 in Sydney on February 9, 2025 (50-45, 50-45, 49-46).

The run ended on August 16, 2025 at UFC 319 in Chicago, where Khamzat Chimaev took the belt with a 50-44 sweep. "He was the better man tonight," Du Plessis said afterward. "I'll be coming to get my belt back, but for now, it's his."

He came back on July 18, 2026 at UFC Oklahoma City and beat Kamaru Usman by unanimous decision (50-45, 49-46, 49-46), moving his record to 24 wins and 3 losses. "There's so many South African kids that look up to me," he said at the Paycom Center. "It's bigger than me." Four title fights plus a main event in eleven months of activity is the core of his earnings, and every one of those purses is private.

What the UFC does publish is Promotional Guidelines Compliance pay, the old Reebok money, which scales with a fighter's status. Du Plessis collected $32,000 as the challenger at UFC 297, then $42,000 as champion at UFC 305, UFC 312 and UFC 319. That is $158,000 across the title run, and at UFC 319 it meant he out-earned Chimaev on that line even while losing the belt.

The bonus column is bigger. He took Performance of the Night for his knockout of Trevin Giles at UFC 264 in July 2021, a night when bonuses were $75,000. Fight of the Night against Darren Till at UFC 282 in December 2022 paid $50,000. The Robert Whittaker stoppage at UFC 290 in July 2023 earned another $50,000 performance bonus, and the Strickland title fight at UFC 297 was Fight of the Night for $50,000. The Usman fight in Oklahoma City was also Fight of the Night, on a card where all four bonuses paid $100,000. Total confirmed bonus money: $325,000.

Three of his four title fights (UFC 305, 312 and 319) earned no bonus, which is a reminder that champions get paid in points, not plaques.

Du Plessis has never given a dollar figure for his purses, and the "nearly $1 million" quotes you may have seen attributed to him do not trace back to anything he actually said on a page we could find. What he has said is revealing in a different way. In March 2025, after Alex Pereira lost the light heavyweight title to Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313, Du Plessis told Jackson O'Doherty's vlog: "Thanks, Ankalaev, for taking the biggest payday of my life. It's nothing personal."

That line tells you how a champion thinks about money. A Pereira superfight would have carried PPV points on top of a champion's purse, and that is where UFC title money actually lives. His four title fights were all pay-per-view headliners or co-headliners, so the undisclosed points component is likely the single largest line in his career earnings, and it is the one line nobody outside the UFC and his management can see.

The per-fight estimates floating around reflect that uncertainty. Sportskeeda modeled $632,000 for UFC 297. The Citizen attributed "approximately $3 million" for UFC 319 to "various reports online." Essentially Sports has used both $1.9 million and $3 million for the same fight and labeled them estimates. Treat all of them as guesses.

Du Plessis' business side is where he separates from most UFC champions. His official site lists Monster Energy, USN, Ignite, Luxury Time, Old School, Betway, NF Additives, Hennie's and INGCO as current partners, with related businesses including CIT Boxing, Stillknocks Meat Co, Knox Hydrate, Inner Ink and Prompt Africa. In January 2024 the South African trading platform Banxso announced a sponsorship, with no value disclosed. Older media lists add SuperSport, World Sports Betting and Mercedes-Benz.

The headline asset is KNOX Hydrate, the drinks brand he co-founded in 2024 with Australian entrepreneur Ethan Hughes. It has become a sponsor of the UFC, EFC, WWE and NASCAR, and from July 1, 2026 Newcastle United's training ground was renamed "The KNOX." IOL reported the naming-rights deal at £18 million over three years, after an earlier IOL report put a broader package including sleeve sponsorship at roughly R400 million. Other outlets have reported different totals, so treat the figures as reported, not confirmed. What is clear is that a UFC middleweight from Pretoria owns a piece of a company writing eight-figure cheques to a Premier League club.

He also trains out of Team CIT in Hatfield, Pretoria. Whether he holds equity in the gym is not confirmed on any page we could reach.

Third-party trackers have moved fast. Sportskeeda had him at $1 million in August 2024, when he had one title fight behind him. Essentially Sports put him at $3 million to $5 million in 2025, and Briefly, citing the Times of India, used the same $3 million to $5 million range in 2026. Celebrity Net Worth has no page on him. No Forbes or Sportico ranking has ever included a UFC fighter in recent years, let alone Du Plessis.

Our math: $158,000 in published compliance pay, $325,000 in confirmed bonuses, four title fights with undisclosed purses and PPV points, a Fight of the Night main event against Usman, a sponsor list that is unusually deep for a non-American fighter, and a founder's stake in KNOX Hydrate whose value depends on numbers nobody has audited. After South African and US taxes, a full camp at CIT and a year with one fight, that lands at an estimated $4 million to $7 million. The KNOX stake is the wild card: if the Newcastle figures are anywhere near what has been reported, the top of that range is conservative.