Reinier de Ridder was arguably one win away from a title shot when disaster struck in his main event outing against Brendan Allen this past October.
Following a dominant start to his UFC career that including a blistering knockout over top prospect Bo Nickal, the former ONE two-division champion started strong against Allen with an early takedown before getting his back and working for a submission finish. When that didn’t happen, de Ridder attempted to apply the same game plan in the second round
but he slowed down dramatically and it was a downward spiral as his gas tank ran try.
Between the fourth and fifth rounds, de Ridder’s coach threw in the towel and stopped the fight when it was clear the 35-year-old Dutch fighter was physically unable to perform any longer.
“I remember walking in and seeing the ref say go,” de Ridder recounted on his YouTube channel. “I get close to him, I think I hit him once, get close, grab him, throw him like I like to throw people with the Harai-goshi. Get on top, feel pretty much in control but don’t really feel myself as normally once I take somebody’s back I’d be close to a choke but I wasn’t able to choke him. I remember having my left arm around his neck, having it pretty deep and being unable to get my right arm free and this is something that rarely happens to me. Something that has never happened to me in a fight before.
“I get up and I feel like all the energy leaving my body basically. I was happy that I made it to the stool, sat down. I don’t remember too much from what they said in the corner but I go out I see him again, I see the takedown is there. I shoot a takedown and basically from that point, I don’t really remember anything.”
Once Allen took over, he punished de Ridder in every facet of the fight while constantly looking for a finish to put the exclamation point on his victory. Instead, de Ridder’s coach ended the fight to prevent further harm being dished out and looking back now, the veteran middleweight agrees with that decision.
“I do feel proud that Harun [Ozkan] was able to make the decision, make the call there,” de Ridder said. “He saw that I wasn’t myself. It was a big decision for him to make, to stop the fight and say ‘this is enough.’ I feel very proud of him for doing that.”
It was a shocking performance considering the way de Ridder had looked through his first four fights in the UFC, which included finishes over Nickal, Kevin Holland and Gerald Meerschaert. While he showed signs of slowing down in his five-round decision victory over former champion Robert Whittaker back in July, de Ridder didn’t face nearly the same level of exhaustion as he did in the fight with Allen.
Part of that could be the incredibly busy schedule that de Ridder kept since joining the UFC roster where he ultimately fought four times in a 10 month span but he also recognized there could be something else wrong with his body.
So de Ridder sought out answers with extensive testing in the aftermath of that loss with hopes of getting some kind of answer about why his conditioning failed him so badly.
“We’re going to get a VO2 max test because my cardio is shit,” de Ridder said. “You get a baseline, I got my bloodwork done and see what I can do to improve this stuff.”
“I’ve been looking at specific therapies to help me to get that red blood cell count up and to recover physically.”
The VO2 test measures the body’s maximum intake of oxygen during intense exercise and de Ridder revealed that he had some concerning blood test results comparatively from before and after his fight.
As far as the future goes, de Ridder continues to monitor his health while joking that he plans to take a day off every now and again to allow himself to recover but he’s wasting no time when it comes to getting back in the win column.
He’s already booked a fight against Caio Borralho at UFC 326 in March but de Ridder truly hopes his improvements eventually lead to a rematch with Allen somewhere down the road.
“My current position in the division is not as great as it was before the fight, of course, but I think I’m still there,” de Ridder said. “I still have a good chance to fight up the ranks, get close to that title somewhere next year.
“I’m really coming for a rematch in this one. I really want to prove that wasn’t me. I have so much more to show in the cage.”
