ESPN MMA<\/a>. “Not that he’s an easier fight, but he’s more of a typical style. I can bring a couple of Dagestanis and a couple of Chechens who wrestle pretty similar to Khamzat. He boxes pretty cleanly. It’s not that special in a sense that it’s not as weird as Dricus is. It would be harder to prepare for (Du Plessis), but if (Chimaev) wins, he might be the bigger name.”<\/p>\nAs for Du Plessis (23-2 MMA, 9-0 UFC), de Ridder says the champion gave him an interesting look in sparring that’s hard to mimic.<\/p>\n
“If there’s one guy who’s hard to study, it’s him,” de Ridder said of Du Plessis. “He doesn’t do the same thing twice. He’s so awkward, so unpredictable. I need more time studying him. He does a lot of awkward stuff, and I sparred him a couple of years ago at Kill Cliff, and what really stands out is the way he kicks.<\/p>\n
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“His kicks come from such a weird angle with the knees slightly in. It was very hard for me to judge where it was going to go \u2013 if it was going to be a middle, high, or low kick. So, it’s going to be very hard to find a guy to emulate him. There’s nobody else who moves like that.”<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Reinier de Ridder: Khamzat Chimaev easier to prep for than Dricus Du Plessis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite Khamzat Chimaev’s dominance, Reinier de Ridder sees him as an easier fight to prep for than Dricus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,15958,17724,19451,26290,641,5899,26291,638,15957,15959,82,640],"class_list":{"0":"post-34907","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-de-ridder","11":"tag-dricus-du-plessis","12":"tag-du-plessis","13":"tag-espn-mma","14":"tag-fighting","15":"tag-khamzat-chimaev","16":"tag-middleweight-title-fight","17":"tag-mma","18":"tag-reinier-de-ridder","19":"tag-robert-whittaker","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-ufc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34907","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=34907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}