"It might end badly for him" - Kiamrian Abbasov believes being smaller works to his advantage against Reinier de Ridder

Kiamrian Abbasov will move up to the middleweight division to challenge Reinier de Ridder for his ONE middleweight world title at ONE: Full Circle on February 25.

The ONE welterweight world champion will give up a little bit of size with the move up a weight class. However, he believes that it may even be an advantage for him. In a recent interview, Abbasov explained that fighting bigger opponents is not new for him, saying:

“Yes, he is much taller but I have fought opponents of this size and bigger in the past. One of my rivals was 197 cm tall, so I have the experience already. Does he? Has he fought someone who is smaller than him and does he know what to watch out for?”

De Ridder stands at 193 centimeters tall as opposed to Abbasov’s 188-centimeter height. Instead of creating distance though, de Ridder typically uses his size to close the distance on his opponent. ‘Brazen’ believes that this strategy will not work against him, saying:

“Actually, he better keep the distance - if he lets me get close enough, it might end badly for him. He is not used to dealing with guys of my size and fighting style, things might get pretty uncomfortable on the ground for him.”

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Kiamrian Abbasov is confident that he can overcome height disadvantage

While Reinier de Ridder believes that his height will be difficult for Kiamrian Abbasov to overcome, ‘Brazen’ is confident that he can get the win. He said:

“Yes, it's harder to fight taller athletes. In the past I used my wrestling skills to win fights against them - I took them to the ground and finished them off. One win was via a TKO and another one was scored in my favor by the judges.”

This will be the first time since 2017 that Abbasov will compete against someone bigger than him. Through his current five-bout win streak, he has defeated four smaller fighters and one who was as tall as he was in Yushin Okami.

Abbasov spoiled the Japanese veteran’s promotional debut in May 2019’s ONE: For Honor with an unforgiving ground-and-pound attack. It ended their match in the second round.

Abbasov is looking to replicate that success against the much bigger de Ridder and become ONE Championship’s newest two-division world champion.