Khamzat Chimaev is going to be an incredibly difficult puzzle for the middleweight division to solve.
After becoming the middleweight champion, Chimaev called out an opponent who could be his first title defense and would offer an interesting challenge.
We now know that the next man to try and break the titleholder’s undefeated run will be decided by two upcoming fights.
Dana White announced that Reinier de Ridder will face Anthony Hernandez on October 18, with the result of this matchup and the main event of UFC Paris next month being used to decide the next challenger.
One of the four fighters in the running to challenge Chimaev has already started to have some thoughts about how he would prepare for such a task.
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Reinier de Ridder suggests that he’d want to bring former opponent Bo Nickal into his camp to train for Khamzat Chimaev
Following Khamzat Chimaev’s post on social media, it looked like Reinier de Ridder might be the next in line to face the new middleweight champion.
If he’s able to extend his winning streak to five in less than a year of being with the promotion, this could well be the case, depending on the manner of the victory.
‘The Dutch Knight’ was asked in a recent interview with MMA Junkie about already having high-level grapplers that he can train with at Kill Cliff FC in Florida to prepare him for Chimaev’s grappling.
De Ridder went on to say that he might reach out to a former opponent of his, who the Dutch fighter became the first person to beat which launched him up the middleweight rankings.
“I was thinking, I might try and send him a message, but if I can get Bo Nickal out, that’d be amazing. That’d be great. That would be amazing for this fight especially. We’ll see.”
In an interview on The MMA Hour in April of last year, Nickal, while he was still undefeated, claimed that he would “ragdoll” Chimaev if they met due to his superior grappling.
De Ridder said that he “doubts” his former foe or the two gyms that they both train at would accept the offer despite how close together they are.
“Yeah, that’s true, but that might be a part of the problem as well because I don’t think they’re too open to cross training over there but we’ll see, I’ll send him a message, see what he says.”
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Reinier de Ridder questions whether training partners was an issue for Dricus du Plessis ahead of UFC 319
Reinier de Ridder clearly isn’t concerned about not having the right training partners that he needs to prepare for an opponent like Khamzat Chimaev.
He did, however, question whether this was a factor that impacted Dricus du Plessis’ performance at UFC 319.
While there was always a good chance that Chimaev would be able to dominate the champion with his wrestling, du Plessis seemingly had no answers for the challenger.
“Something I’ve thought about regarding Dricus for over the last year and a bit is who is he actually training with there in South Africa? He’s always ready and he’s shown great fights and achieved a lot being there,” de Ridder stated when speaking to MMA Junkie.”
“But, a couple of years ago, he was still coming over to Kill Cliff here. It’s just something I’ve wondered about, like does he even have high-level wrestlers to train with over there, because that might be something he’s missing I’d say.”