This is the live blog for Reinier de Ridder vs. Brendan Allen, the middleweight main event for UFC Vancouver on Saturday night at Rogers Arena.<\/p>\n
A former two-division ONE Championship titleholder, de Ridder made his UFC debut in November, and hasn\u2019t looked back since. Three stoppage wins in his first three fights set \u201cRDR\u201d up for a main event battle with former champion Robert Whittaker that de Ridder edged out, putting him in the thick of the title mix at 185 pounds.<\/p>\n
De Ridder was supposed to face Anthony Hernandez in a potential title eliminator this Saturday, but after \u201cFluffy\u201d withdrew, Allen stepped in on short notice to save the event. A former LFA champion, Allen made his UFC debut off of Dana White\u2019s Contender Series in 2019, and has been a going concern in the middleweight division since then. Now Allen hopes to re-insert himself into the title conversation with a big win over a surging contender.<\/p>\n
Check out the live blog for de Ridder vs. Allen below.<\/p>\n
And here we are. It\u2019s been a weird one, folks. That co-main event was a travesty that I could write many thousands of words on, but it\u2019s in the past. Now its RDR fight time. Let\u2019s enjoy.<\/p>\n
Allen walks out with the Canadian flag and the red fight kit. This man is from Louisiana, but repping Canada this weekend, because his grandparents are from Alberta. I suppose we can allow it.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s RDR\u2019s turn. He\u2019s out, draped in the Dutch flag, rocking his blue shorts and looking very confident. The Dutch Knight has arrived.<\/p>\n
RDR is 6 years older, 2 inches taller, and has a 3-inch reach advantage. He\u2019s a comfortable betting favorite at -190, with the comeback on Allen at +160.<\/p>\n
Joe Martinez gets the festivities started and the crowd is lively. Mike Bell, Sal D\u2019Amato, and Jerin Valel are the judges. Jason Herzog is the referee.<\/p>\n
Allen has his eyes locked on RDR for his announcement. Then he sends a message to his kids and walks around a bit. The crowd is pretty tame. So much for repping Canada.<\/p>\n
RDR gets some love. He stands there, being enormous, and looking around, before acknowledging the crowd.<\/p>\n
They meet in the middle for final instructions and tough gloves. It\u2019s go time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the live blog for Reinier de Ridder vs. Brendan Allen, the middleweight main event for UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-223549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}