Las Vegas — Middleweight and former ONE Championship star Reinier de Ridder has been asked a lot about his UFC Vancouver performance.
de Ridder (21-3) saw a five-fight win streak snapped by short-notice opponent Brendan Allen at the event last fall, in a performance that saw “The Dutch Knight” tire early. It had people asking if RDR was okay.
“That’s the first thing they ask, and afterwards they ask ‘when are you moving up to 205?'” de Ridder joked during Wednesday’s UFC 326 mediad day.
The culprit, it turns out, was health-related. “Just on all levels, my bloodwork and everything was in the trash. Everything was bad. But mostly standing out, severe anemia, very very low red blood cell count. Just worked my body to sh*t basically.”
The good news is that de Ridder found his answers, though it took a bit to work his way back to health. Still, knowing was better than not knowing.
“At least I knew what was wrong with me at that point, was very happy with that. I had something to work from,” he noted. “But it took a long time to fight my body back, to get everything started, to get the right treatment, and find everything out. That wasn’t easy.”
For a couple weeks, RDR couldn’t complete a training session, or “walk up the stairs without being tired. So there was a little while there where I was thinking ‘I might never fix this stuff, it might be over.'”
It’s not over. Reinier de Ridder returns this Saturday at UFC 326 against another middleweight contender coming off a setback, Caio Borrlaho. Interestingly enough, RDR has been booked before the man that beat him, Allen. And with Paulo Costa moving up in weight and Robert Whittaker potentially doing the same, plus Dricus Du Plessis still without a fight, the middleweight division is in an interesting spot.
As de Ridder put it, “it seems like there’s a lot of opportunities right there.”
Of course, there’s also the chance that de Ridder himself moves up to light heavyweight. He’s considered it in the past, and held two belts in ONE.
“I don’t know. I’ve been talking about it too much for the last couple days, and you guys make me hungry,” RDR admitted.
Watch the full UFC 326 media day appearance by Reinier de Ridder above.
