Here’s one thing you can say about Reinier de Ridder: the man is honest.
That’s true whether he’s assessing other fighters’ skills or his own. For instance, he raised a few eyebrows when he suggested he and fellow middleweight Bo Nickal, whom de Ridder faces at Saturday’s UFC Des Moines event, should go out there and get right to the ground game since no one wants to watch two grapplers try to strike.
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“Let’s be real,” de Ridder told Uncrowned this week. “We’re both so elite at this, both so good at the grappling arts. Of course, I’ve been putting work into my striking for the last 10 years, and, of course, I like to show this off. But I’ll never be Israel Adesanya. Let’s be honest, I’m never going to be as refined as he is. So yeah, I want to show off the grappling. I want to show off what makes us special this Saturday.”
The Dutch middleweight is similarly forthright about what he was thinking when the UFC offered him this fight against Nickal, a highly decorated college wrestling champion who’s undefeated in his seven-fight MMA career.
So far in the UFC, Nickal’s opponents have seemed like a series of hand-selected victims. Only his most recent opponent, Paul Craig, had any name recognition among fans, and he entered the fight with Nickal having lost four of his previous five outings.
Prior to that, Nickal earned the distinction of being the biggest betting favorite in UFC history when he was, for a time, a 25-1 favorite over Val Woodburn at UFC 290, according to at least one sportsbook.
Reinier de Ridder is 2-0 since coming to the UFC, but he didn’t expect matchmakers to give him a top prospect like Bo Nickal just yet. (Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images)
(USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect / Reuters)
In other words, the UFC seemed to be offering him favorable matchups Nickal could easily win. Which is why de Ridder was surprised when the UFC called him for a co-main event bout with Nickal in Des Moines, Iowa. De Ridder is, after all, a former two-division titleholder in ONE Championship. He also has three times as many professional MMA fights as Nickal.
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“I didn’t expect it, to be honest,” de Ridder said. “I didn’t expect this one, and I was surprised that it all came to fruition. Not trying to act too cocky, but I was surprised that both sides agreed, just because of that. He’s really had fights that are tailor-made for him so far, basically. And this might be a very rough one for him.”
Nickal is currently a -325 favorite, according to BetMGM, but that still makes this the closest fight — at least according to the odds — that he’s been in since beginning his pro MMA career in 2022.
Meanwhile, de Ridder’s own time in the UFC has been brief but memorable. Hardcore fans followed his career through overseas promotions, but he was a new face to many in the UFC viewing audience when he debuted in November. And while he eventually submitted Gerald Meerschaert with an arm-triangle choke in the third round, de Ridder did look shaky at times in the fight.
Looking back, de Ridder attributes that to a couple different factors, one of which is the well-documented phenomenon known as UFC jitters. No matter how many times you’ve fought elsewhere, there’s just something different about doing it in the Octagon for the first time.
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“Every fighter who starts out in this sport wants to be in the UFC,” de Ridder said. “After everything I went through in ONE Championship, it was a very big deal for me to finally make it to the UFC. … So it was a little bit nerves, but also it had been hard to set up training. And I knew [Meerschaert] pretty good before, we’d trained together at [Florida-based gym] Kill Cliff.
“It was just a lot. And I’m not saying it was a bad fight. I knocked him down in the first, choked him in the third, but it wasn’t my best.”
That performance might have led some fans to write off de Ridder as one more fighter who looked great outside the UFC but was likely to be overmatched in it. He managed to put some of those doubts to rest in his second outing, a dominant first-round submission of Kevin Holland at UFC 311 in January.
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“Coming into that fight, I wanted to make a point,” de Ridder said. “I wanted to show that I can get this done quick. And I was able to do that.”
But against Nickal he faces a much tougher test and a very different stylistic match-up. As good as de Ridder’s submission game might be, the strength of wrestlers like Nickal is their ability to decide when and how the fight hits the mat. At least, that’s how it’s usually works in MMA.
But while de Ridder would prefer to get right into the grappling and not waste fans’ time with a striking display between two non-strikers, he’s also not ready to concede any aspect of the fight to Nickal — no matter what the man accomplished wearing a nylon singlet.
“I’m going to take him down,” de Ridder said. “Why not? I’ve been taking people down for so long. I understand that people call me a jiu-jitsu guy, but it’s always been about the takedowns as well. … Bo, I think he’s building a good base, a good game, but it’s just not there yet. I’m going to show that.”
