Reinier de Ridder says he will come better prepared for Anatoly Malykhin in inevitable rematch

Reinier de Ridder learned a lot from the first loss of his professional career. At ONE on Prime Video 5, ‘The Dutch Knight’ put his light heavyweight world championship on the line against undefeated interim heavyweight titleholder Anatoly Malykhin.

After he was unable to take Malykhin down, the Russian behemoth started to pressure the Dutchman, soon finding a home for his devastating power that ended the fight in the opening round.

After taking some time to recover from the loss and take lessons from it, Reinier de Ridder is able to admit the mistakes that he made in that fight so that he can avoid them in his career.

Another way that he hopes to put these lessons into practice is in a rematch with Anatoly Malykhin, which he believes is inevitable. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, the reigning ONE middleweight world champion said:

“I’ll take some time to prepare for this one. I’ve really been working on footwork and stuff. I’ll take a couple of months, like three months at least, before I accept the fight to be able to gain some kilos. Get at least close to like 100 kilos or 102. There’s a lot of intricate, technical stuff that I can do differently. It’s a lot of work, but I’m more than prepared to do everything that’s needed to beat this guy.”

Watch the full interview below:

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Reinier de Ridder shares he was fine physically after devastating finish at the hands of Anatoly Malykhin

Despite the devastating end to his last outing inside the circle, Reinier de Ridder revealed that he was physically fine after his loss to Anatoly Malykhin.

In his final fight of 2022, de Ridder faced a fellow undefeated world champion who was coming off the back of an incredible year just like him. In a classic matchup of elite grappler versus striking phenom, Malykhin’s size and strength proved to be too much for ‘The Dutch Knight’.

With a first-round knockout, Anatoly Malykhin claimed the light heavyweight world championship and was named as ONE’s Fighter of the Year in 2022.

In a recent interview with SCMP MMA, during which he reflected on the fight and spoke about his upcoming grappling contest, Reinier de Ridder spoke about the aftermath of his knockout loss.

He said:

“It was pretty quick in the back. That’s what I remember again. There’s bits and pieces of the fight itself that I remember.”

The middleweight world champion added:

"After that I was pretty much ok straight away. I was back to normal pretty quickly. I didn’t really have any complaints as far as headaches and nausea or whatever. As you can hear, I’m still kinda coherent speaking-wise. I think I’m ok but I really want to recover from this so that’s what I’m focused on right now.”