Reinier de Ridder explains why preparing for Khamzat Chimaev is easier than Dricus du Plessis<\/a><\/p>\nWhile de Ridder will still be happy to have an opponent, it\u2019s certainly a shame that we aren\u2019t going to get the Hernandez fight \u2013 at least for the time being. Things are looking pretty congested at 185 pounds and at the very least, that should hopefully mean that we have plenty of potential challengers for Khamzat Chimaev and the world championship.<\/p>\n
In a recent interview, de Ridder spoke candidly about this switch up in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
de Ridder analyzes new UFC Vancouver opponent<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big letdown. It was a shame,\u201d De Ridder told MMA Junkie Radio. \u201cHe really has a cool skill set, \u2018Fluffy\u2019 has, and he came in with a lot of hype, so I was very sad he pulled out. And there were a couple of days I didn\u2019t expect anyone to step up at all to be honest. Nobody wanted to fight. We tried Costa, but Costa wanted on his own terms, so that didn\u2019t happen. I\u2019m very, very grateful that Brendan took the call.\u201d<\/p>\n
RDR went on to discuss the fact that while they once shared the same gym, he never really trained much with his new foe Allen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never really trained much,\u201d de Ridder said. \u201cHe was never that welcoming to me, so I never really wanted to work with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI like everybody,\u201d de Ridder said. \u201cI\u2019m not somebody to hold a grudge at all. I train with all the middleweights, but he never wanted to train with me. I don\u2019t know why.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quotes via MMA Junkie<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC star Reinier de Ridder has expressed disappointment at Anthony Hernandez being forced out of their fight. Right…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-163605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}