{"id":50525,"date":"2025-08-07T13:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T13:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50525\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T13:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T13:57:10","slug":"anthony-hernandez-pitches-middleweight-bmf-title-fight-vs-reinier-de-ridder-with-ufc-vegas-109-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/50525\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Hernandez pitches middleweight BMF title fight vs. Reinier de Ridder with UFC Vegas 109 win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Hernandez<\/a> loves to fight, and should he extend his win streak to eight fights this Saturday, he has an idea to make the middleweight division even more interesting.<\/p>\n

Hernandez is set to face Roman Dolidze<\/a> in the main event of UFC Vegas 109 at the UFC APEX. The timing of the matchup is interesting, especially considering Dricus du Plessis<\/a> and Khamzat Chimaev<\/a> fight for the title at UFC 319<\/a> next Saturday, and Reinier de Ridder<\/a> recently defeated former champ Robert Whittaker<\/a> in the main event of UFC Abu Dhabi<\/a> in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cFluffy\u201d has seen fans hoping for a future fight between Hernandez and de Ridder, and should he do his part this weekend, he has quite the idea for the UFC and the 185-pound division.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Reinier] did f*cking great, man,\u201d Hernandez told MMA Fighting. \u201cHe\u2019s a tough motherf*cker. He got f*cking dropped once, got right back up on his horse and f*cking handle business, you know what I mean? You got to respect a man like that, and I\u2019ve met him before. He\u2019s a cool ass dude, got nothing bad to say about him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if that\u2019s f*cking case, man, they better f*cking make a BMF belt for the f*cking middleweight division or something because there\u2019s a lot of f*cking hungry motherf*ckers in here that I think deserve that shit too, you know what I mean, like a f*cking a little weight belt or something, like something. I don\u2019t give a fuck, run that shit, but one fight at a time, you know what I mean? I just want to go out there and f*cking show the world what I really can do and the rest will play itself out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hernandez is currently in the midst of the most activity he\u2019s had in a years, getting set to compete for the third time in 10 months. In his most recent bout, Hernandez defeated Brendan Allen<\/a> via decision at UFC Seattle<\/a> in February. Despite entering the bout, he says, with a rib injury, Hernandez was confident he\u2019d beat his past LFA opponent for a second time, despite, admittedly, not putting on his best showing.<\/p>\n

When he was offered Dolidze, he understood why and was OK with it despite being on one of the more impressive win streaks in the division.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, I really don\u2019t give a f*ck, man,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cIt\u2019s like one fight at a time for me. I\u2019ll get to the belt. It\u2019s just a matter of time, you know what I mean? I would have liked someone like in the top 5, but my performance last one, I came in hurt, obviously, so like takeaways, [I] probably shouldn\u2019t come in hurt and fight, so I can actually show the f*ck out, you know what I mean, but it is what it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither way, I like to fight, so no matter who the f*ck it is, I really don\u2019t give a f*ck. As long as I\u2019m getting paid, I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal is to get to a title fight, but if the 31-year-old has to beat every single fighter in the rankings before that happens, that\u2019s fine with him.<\/p>\n

That just means more people Hernandez can hit in the face.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like, for me, this shit\u2019s just therapy I get paid for,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cI\u2019ve been fighting since I was a f*cking kid, man. Like this is the one thing I could say that I feel comfortable doing. It\u2019s like other shit, I really don\u2019t enjoy, like actual jobs and f*cking sitting around people and having to talk to them all the time and shit like that, you know what I mean? Like at a job where you can\u2019t just [be] like, \u2018Bitch, you talk to me like that, I\u2019m going to slap the f*ck out of you.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not good in the real world, but being violent, this is my outlet. This is where I do good things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Hernandez loves to fight, and should he extend his win streak to eight fights this Saturday, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396,14855],"class_list":{"0":"post-50525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news","16":"tag-videos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50525","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=50525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}