SUMMARY
- Reinier de Ridder suffered a brutal KO loss to Anatoly Malykhin in their last fight in December 2022.
- Their rematch will take place at ONE 166: Qatar.
When ONE Middleweight MMA World Champion Reinier de Ridder arrived in ONE Championship, the Dutchman found instant success. He won his first seven outings with ease, capturing both the middleweight and light heavyweight crowns.
But all that changed when he met two-weight ONE MMA World Champion Anatoly Malykhin in December 2022 at ONE on Prime Video 5. De Ridder suffered a brutal first-round knockout against Malykhin. Fifteen months later, the pair will square off once more this Friday, 1 March, at ONE 166: Qatar at Lusail Sports Arena.
Ahead of the massive main event this Friday, de Ridder has had plenty of time to rebuild himself. The knockout defeat to Malykhin came as a wake-up call to the 33-year-old. And he believes the lack of adversity he faced early on gave him a false sense of reality.
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“If you win 16 in a row – and to be honest, not to seem arrogant, because I’m not trying to be arrogant – but it always went pretty easily in the fight, right? I never really got touched. I never really got hurt. I never really faced any real adversity. It was always like that,” he said.
“There was a guy in front of me, I’d walk toward him, take him down, and choke him out basically. So in my head, it kind of got stuck that this is how fights go and I can do this to anybody in the world. I could until I couldn’t, and it clearly showed when I got knocked out viciously, and I’ve been building back ever since.”
In any competitive setting, a loss teaches an athlete more than a victory ever will. De Ridder has identified the error of his ways, and he now plans to set things right by successfully defending his middleweight crown in Qatar this week.
Reinier de Ridder says rematch with Anatoly Malykhin is “about redemption”
After suffering the first defeat of his professional career, ONE Middleweight MMA World Champion Reinier de Ridder only had one name on his mind for his return to action – and that was two-weight ONE MMA World Champion Anatoly Malykhin.
The punishing first-round knockout in December 2022 at ONE on Prime Video 5 stripped De Ridder of his two-weight World Champion status as Malykhin snatched the light heavyweight gold from him. Since then, the Russian has been the only person on De Ridder’s mind.
So when the pair clash with the Dutchman’s middleweight MMA gold up for grabs this Friday, 1 March, at ONE 166: Qatar, 15 months of angst will spill out inside the ring. Revenge against Malykhin is at the top of De Ridder’s to-do list. And he plans on bringing Malykhin’s monstrous momentum to a close.
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“I’m very happy that it’s Malykhin. And again, I’m very happy that it’s a chance to redeem myself, which is the most important thing. I didn’t ask for a weight class. I don’t care which weight class this one happens at. Of course, this is closer to my natural weight, my walk-around weight, so it’s technically a good thing for me,” de Ridder said.
“But it’s not a factor in my mind. And I don’t want you guys to make it a thing, either. So when I finish this guy, when I show myself, show my true skills, show my true potential in this fight, I don’t want you guys to go, ‘Oh, he was depleted. He had to make the weight, he’s not at 100 percent.’ This is about me getting back on this last fight. This is about me redeeming myself. It’s about redemption.”
Friday night will tell fans whether or not the weight difference will truly matter when these two titans clash at Lusail Sports Arena in Qatar.
