Reinier de Ridder had moments of doubt about his future following UFC Vancouver.<\/p>\n
A former two-division champion in ONE, de Ridder made immediate waves after signing with the UFC in 2024, winning his first four fights, including a victory over former champion Robert Whittaker. \u201cThe Dutch Knight\u201d found himself on the cusp of a title shot, but that all came crashing down in October, when \u201cRDR\u201d got stopped by Brendan All at UFC Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Afterward, much was made of de Ridder\u2019s collapse during the bout as he gassed out early in the fight, and speaking with media during the UFC 326 Media Day, \u201cRDR\u201d acknowledged that fighting five times in 11 months wreaked havoc on his body.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust on all levels, my bloodwork, everything was in the trash,\u201d de Ridder said about his medical evaluations after UFC Vancouver. \u201cEverything was bad. But mostly standing out, severe anemia, very, very low red blood cell count. Just worked my body to shit, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, things were so bad for de Ridder that he wasn\u2019t just affected on fight night, but for a long time afterward. So much so that he began to wonder if this was the end of his fighting career.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least I knew what was wrong with me at that point,\u201d de Ridder said of his evaluation. \u201cI was very happy with that. I had something to work from. But it took a long time to find my body back, to get everything started, to get the right treatment, and find everything out. That wasn\u2019t easy. So, there were a couple weeks there, [where] I couldn\u2019t complete a training session, I couldn\u2019t walk up the stairs without being tired. So, there was a little while there thinking, \u2018I might never fix this stuff. It might be over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But despite the hardship it caused, de Ridder admits that if he were put in the same position again, he\u2019d probably do the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the opportunity there, most likely I make the same dumb decision to fight again, because it was too cool,\u201d de Ridder said. \u201cI was on such a roll. I knew my body wasn\u2019t there, but I just thought if I could get him out of there in the first round \u2014 and I was close \u2014 then we wouldn\u2019t be talking about my health right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fortunately, de Ridder\u2019s health issues appear to be solved now. He returns to action this weekend against Caio Borralho in the co-main event of UFC 326 in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reinier de Ridder had moments of doubt about his future following UFC Vancouver. A former two-division champion in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525245,"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":["post-525244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525244","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=525244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}