Dricus Du Plessis is still the UFC middleweight champion, having beaten Israel Adesanya physically and mentally in one of the fiercest grudge matches in recent memory.

Du Plessis, who won the middleweight title with a decision victory over Sean Strickland in January, met the former champion and combat sports legend Adesanya in the main event of Saturday night's UFC 305 card from Perth, Australia.

The bout was preceded by months of trash talk between the pair — trash talk that got so heated it brought the Nigerian-born New Zealander Adesanya to tears at the pre-fight press conference.

While the two middleweights ultimately squashed their beef in the Octagon, it's arguable Du Plessis had Adesanya beat long before he submitted his rival in the fourth round of their anticipated showdown in Australia.

"I came here to die with this belt," Du Plessis told commentator Daniel Cormier shortly after Adesanya's tap-out. "Here I am. And still, baby."

The fight got off to a fast start. Both men looked to push the action from the opening bell, and as the commentators quickly began to note, the advancing party was the winner of nearly every exchange.

That led to a very competitive first round, contested nearly entirely on the feet.

After a close first round with a fighter he hailed as "one of the if not the greatest striker ever," Du Plessis began to lean on his world-class grappling in the second. He completed several takedowns, even if he struggled to keep the former champion on the mat.

"At this level, it's hard to get people down," Du Plessis said. "The man is a monster at getting back up and not getting choked."

Heading into the third round, it looked as though Adesanya was in big trouble, but the former champion ended up having his best round of the fight, punishing Du Plessis with crisp shots to the head and even more successfully to the body.

Adesanya's success continued into the early moments of the fourth — by which point it looked like a knockout wasn't far off — but it didn't last. After landing a few hard shots of his own, Du Plessis completed yet another deftly timed takedown, leaped right onto his challenger's back, locked up a rear-naked choke, and a few moments later, coaxed out the tap.

"I made a stupid, dumb mistake on the ground," Adesanya admitted in his post-fight interview with Cormier. "I didn't do what I wanted to do tonight. I'm disappointed in myself, but at the same time, I'm proud.

"I knew he was going to be tough so I wasn't surprised."

Grudge matches often end with the fighters involved shaking hands, but the pre-fight animosity between Du Plessis and Adesanya was so intense that it was easy to imagine it out-lasting the fight. Yet in the end, Du Plessis apologized for his pre-fight comments, the most controversial of which saw him suggest that Adesanya was not a true African champion since his family relocated from Nigeria to New Zealand when he was young.

"Tonight, Africa would have won regardless," the champion said, before proclaiming it South Africa's night.

"I have the ultimate respect for him, warrior to warrior," he added, shaking hands and hugging his opponent.

While some surely expected the 35-year-old legend Adesanya to retire in the cage after his deflating loss to his long-time rival, the former champion borrowed a line from The Wolf of Wall Street to assure his fans he'll be sticking around.

"I'm not f--cking leaving," he said.

As for Du Plessis, there's still plenty of work to be done.

In the lead-up to UFC 305, UFC CEO Dana White revealed that Strickland, who won the title with a decision win over Adesanya before losing the belt to Du Plessis in January, is most likely next in line for a middleweight title shot. Beyond that, the UFC boss said that the winner of an October fight between former champ Robert Whittaker and unbeaten contender Khamzat Chimaev will also be in the title conversation.

As far as Du Plessis is concerned, however, the opponent doesn't matter. The only thing that matters to him are the two words Octagon announcer Bruce Buffer bellows after the fight.

"I want to hear 'and still,'" he said. "I don't care about the opponent."

Whomever he fights next, and no matter how that title defense goes, Du Plessis will make the long journey home from Perth to Pretoria with the knowledge that he beat one of the greatest middleweights of all time in the Octagon, and in the pre-fight mental warfare that preceded their meeting inside it.