{"id":32162,"date":"2025-07-29T16:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/32162\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T16:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T16:03:08","slug":"robert-whittaker-releases-first-statement-since-disappointing-ufc-abu-dhabi-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/32162\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Whittaker releases first statement since disappointing UFC Abu Dhabi loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Whittaker<\/a> is holding his head high, as usual.<\/p>\n

The former middleweight champion suffered a loss this past Saturday in the main event of UFC Abu Dhabi<\/a>, dropping a close split decision to Reinier de Ridder<\/a>. Whittaker battled de Ridder for 25 minutes, scoring a dramatic knockdown in the third, but a pair of 48-47 scores for de Ridder earned \u201cThe Dutch Knight\u201d the victory.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Whittaker released a statement via Instagram reacting to the loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed, but I\u2019m not disheartened,\u201d Whittaker said. \u201cThere are a lot of things I liked about the fight, but a lot of things I didn\u2019t. I\u2019m going to take it all, head back to the gym, sit with the team, pick it apart, and then get back on the horse. That\u2019s all you can do.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongratulations to de Ridder. He had a particular game plan, he executed it well. It got him the win. It is what it is sometimes, but yeah, I\u2019m going to learn from this experience and move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whittaker, 34, has now lost consecutive fights for the first time since 2014. He was looking to bounce back from a nasty face crank submission loss to Khamzat Chimaev<\/a> this past October, but fell short on the scorecards despite some strong moments.<\/p>\n

With a title shot that much further away, fans and critics will likely speculate on how many fights the 16-year veteran has left. However, Whittaker made it clear he will step back into the octagon again, ideally in his home country of Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t the end of Robert Whittaker,\u201d Whittaker said. \u201cThis is just another learning curve, another speed bump. I\u2019m going to spend some time with my family, I\u2019m going to just rest, recover a little bit, and then hopefully get back on an Australian card. It\u2019s been a while, and honestly, I\u2019m longing for it. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve fought in Australia, and I\u2019d love to fight here again. It\u2019s time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robert Whittaker is holding his head high, as usual. The former middleweight champion suffered a loss this past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[4639,49,48,4640,24695,641,7792,700,701,7964,638,24693,18787,12359,82,24694,640,702,17053],"class_list":["post-32162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-abu","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dhabi","tag-disappointing","tag-fighting","tag-first","tag-front-page","tag-latest-news","tag-loss","tag-mma","tag-releases","tag-robert","tag-since","tag-sports","tag-statement","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-whittaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32162","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=32162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}