{"id":276554,"date":"2025-11-11T00:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/276554\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T00:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:56:10","slug":"bo-nickal-vows-to-finish-not-just-control-at-ufc-322","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/276554\/","title":{"rendered":"Bo Nickal vows to finish, not just control at UFC 322"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) super Middleweight prospect Bo Nickal returns to action<\/a> to headline the UFC 322 \u201cPrelims\u201d<\/a> against Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) legend Rodolfo Vieira inside Madison Square Garden in New York City.<\/p>\n

Nickal says his TKO loss<\/a> to Reinier de Ridder earlier this year was a humbling wake-up call that forced a mental reset. That night in Des Moines exposed a flaw: Nickal defaulted to a wrestling mindset of control and scoring instead of actively trying to damage and finish his opponent.<\/p>\n

However, because of that devastating loss (watch highlights<\/a>), the three-time NCAA Division I national wrestling champion is now ready to use grappling to hurt his opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat fight was a good lesson because I\u2019d never been hit hard in a fight before<\/a>, never had damage done to me, so it really shifted my mindset,\u201d Nickal told Jorge Masvidal on the Death Row MMA podcast. \u201cIn my mind, I felt like I was controlling him. I had his back against the cage, I felt like I could take him down at any point \u2014 but I made a mistake. I\u2019m used to wrestling, where the whole point is to control and score points. It\u2019s not like that in a fight. The point is to do damage and hurt the guy \u2014 that fight made me realize I have to mess this dude up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nickal says the experience forced him to stop treating mixed martial arts (MMA) like collegiate wrestling and start treating it like a fight where damage rules over control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t be just holding them against the cage or holding them down. I know I can do that,\u201d Nickal added. \u201cI felt like I didn\u2019t have a good idea of what I wanted to do, but since that fight, I have a really strong idea of what my strategy and game plan is to win the fight. And by winning the fight, I mean do as much damage as possible \u2014 control it that way rather than a wrestling match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nickal\u2019s elite wrestling has been the talk of his career, yet he hasn\u2019t often used it to inflict significant damage inside the Octagon. Facing a high-level BJJ specialist like Vieira at Madison Square Garden is a true test: will Nickal fold back into old habits (like the last time he faced a high-level BJJ grappler<\/a>), or will he finally put the pieces together and finish fights the way he says he will?<\/p>\n

Time will tell \u2014 but Nickal insists he\u2019s already changed his approach.<\/p>\n

To see who else is fighting at UFC 322 this weekend in New York click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) super Middleweight prospect Bo Nickal returns to action to headline the UFC 322 \u201cPrelims\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396,14855],"class_list":["post-276554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276554","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=276554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}