On Saturday night, Reinier de Ridder will face a fellow grappling specialist in the UFC’s middleweight division.
ONE Championship’s former two-weight champion has hit the ground running since debuting inside the Octagon last November.
With back-to-back submission wins over Gerald Meerschaert and Kevin Holland, de Ridder has shown that he’s still an incredibly dangerous operator once the fight hits the floor.
In Des Moines, he will look to secure his biggest win to date when he faces the undefeated Bo Nickal in the co-main event on May 3.
Long before he started to make some noise in the UFC at 185-pounds, ‘The Dutch Knight’ had already earned a reputation for rendering his opponents unconscious.
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Reinier de Ridder choked out Vitaly Bigdash with an inverted triangle at ONE 159
With 14 of his 19 wins coming by submission, it’s no secret what Reinier de Ridder is trying to do when he steps inside the cage but this approach proved to be incredibly successful for him during his time in ONE Championship.
His most impressive finish came at ONE 159 in July of 2022 where he put his ONE middleweight title on the line for the second time after dethroning Aung La N Sang and taking his two belts in back-to-back fights.
Vitaly Bigdash, a former ONE middleweight champion, was riding a three-fight win streak heading into his title shot but his momentum didn’t stop him from falling into a trap.
Surprisingly, it was the challenger who was the first one take the fight to the floor after he jumped for a tight guillotine choke that de Ridder survived.
From here, ‘The Dutch Knight’ dominated from the top until he lost the position after going for a kimura which resulted in him being on the bottom.
This scramble only ended up backfiring for the challenger who was instantly being threated by another submission as de Ridder locked up an inverted triangle choke with his legs and put Bigdash to sleep in just under 3 and a half minutes.
The finish earned ONE Championship’s 2022 submission of the year as ‘RDR’ advanced to 16-0 in his pro career.
Bo Nickal has overcome submission specialists like Reinier de Ridder in the past
It’s a regular occurrence in MMA that when you get two accomplished grapplers, they choose to test each others striking rather than relying on their specialist skillsets.
This was the case for Bo Nickal and Paul Craig when they met at UFC 309 last November where the American produced a unanimous decision win.
Though he did receive some criticism for his performance, Nickal showed that he could beat a dangerous grappler without needing to use his wrestling.
We will find out on May 3 whether he can do the same thing to Reinier de Ridder or whether ‘The Dutch Knight’ will earn his third consecutive win in just 7 months.