{"id":522922,"date":"2026-03-06T17:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T17:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/522922\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T17:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T17:22:10","slug":"ufc-326-co-main-event-preview-and-prediction-caio-borralho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/522922\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 326 Co-Main Event Preview and Prediction: Caio Borralho"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomorrow night in the <a href=\"https:\/\/empiresportsmedia.com\/category\/mma\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">co-main event of UFC 326<\/a>, we are going to see a pivotal matchup in the middleweight division. Top ten contenders will battle it out as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tapology.com\/fightcenter\/fighters\/107316-caio-borralho-cara-de-kombi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Caio Borralho<\/a> (17-2) takes on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tapology.com\/fightcenter\/fighters\/49983-reinier-de-ridder\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Reinier De Ridder<\/a> (21-3). <\/p>\n<p>Both of these men were knocking on the door of a middleweight title fight last year. RDR had won his first four fights inside the octagon including a win over Robert Whittaker which led him to a headliner against Brendan Allen last October. <\/p>\n<p>Had De Ridder won, he would\u2019ve likely earned a title shot. However, he was dominated and didn\u2019t answer the bell in the final round leading to a TKO loss. It was truly an awful performance from RDR after a sensational run to start his UFC career. <\/p>\n<p>After earning a contract on The Contender Series, Caio Borralho won his first seven fights inside the octagon which led him to a main event last September against Nassourdine Imavov. Borralho just looked flat in the matchup and lost a lopsided decision at UFC Paris. <\/p>\n<p>UFC 326 Prediction<\/p>\n<p>Both of these men need a bounce back win in order to get themselves right back in the mix at 185 pounds. Both men are coming off bad performances, but the RDR performance is much more damaging in my eyes. He completely gassed in his fight and his corner stopped the fight before the final round. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure what to expect from him tomorrow night because that was such a drastic downturn from what we saw through his first four UFC fights. RDR thrives when he\u2019s able to use his grappling, but I don\u2019t think that he\u2019ll be easily able to get Borralho down and even if he does, Borralho has tremendous grappling himself. <\/p>\n<p>On the feet, Borralho is going to strike with much more volume and I think his striking is cleaner overall. I think we are going to see a lot of striking and clinch work in this matchup at UFC 326. While I do like the knees of RDR, I think this fight is mainly fought from range where Borralho will land more which will ultimately lead to his decision win.<\/p>\n<p>Prediction: Caio Borralho by Decision<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<img alt=\"avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/8afdd58ed44e26340fbf2746d7cfcf55b40dc9e6e8a6f1b49908d41b87140365.png\"  class=\"avatar avatar-70 photo\" height=\"70\" width=\"70\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"low\" decoding=\"async\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\tMy  name  is  Daniel,  and  I  love  MMA.  My  goal  is  provide  the  best  possible  coverage  of  the  MMA  &#8230; More about <a class=\"more-bio\" href=\"https:\/\/empiresportsmedia.com\/author\/draycunningham\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Cunningham<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tomorrow night in the co-main event of UFC 326, we are going to see a pivotal matchup in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-522922","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\/522922","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=522922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}