Reinier De Ridder will now be fighting Bo Nickal at UFC On ESPN+ 114 on May 3rd, 2025 and although this is a tough test, the veteran fighter sees a path to victory. It’s interesting matchmaking from the UFC, as they’ve put together two of the best grapplers they have in the middleweight division. De Ridder and Nickal have distinctly different styles though, as De Ridder is a submission specialist with beautiful Jiu-Jitsu and Nickal is a wrestling expert with a phenomenal top-game. On paper it should be a clash of grappling styles with some wild exchanges, but fights between elite grapplers often turn into striking matches when both men are afraid to go to the ground.
Nickal is not as experienced as De Ridder, but he tore through the first 6 opponents of his professional and finished every single one. It was only in his last fight that he wasn’t able to find the finish, and it was largely because he chose to strike instead of using his wrestling. De Ridder wasn’t overly-impressed with what he saw even though it took Nickal to 7-0:
“It wasn’t that great to watch, but he showed off that his striking is not that bad. He has pretty decent footwork as well. He hits pretty hard. He throws everything into that left overhand. But he wasn’t really able to make a statement in that fight. Maybe he just had a bad night, who knows?”
De Ridder did learn something from watching it though, and it gave him the gameplan that he plans on using to beat Nickal:
“I think I have to make him wrestle. As we saw in the Paul Craig fight, I think he’s pretty scared of the Jiu-Jitsu on the floor. He’s pretty scared to get caught with something. So I think I need to make him wrestle.”
Craig was undoubtedly the best grappler that Bo Nickal had faced in his career so far, and Reinier De Ridder is just as much of a threat on the ground. De Ridder is 19-2 in his professional MMA career and with 13 submission wins from a range of different positions, he’s dangerous everywhere. If Nickal isn’t willing to go to the ground with De Ridder, he thinks he knows how to take him there:
“I need to get close, put the pressure on him, hit him a couple times, and I think he will definitely start shooting. I think this fight is won or lost in the clinch. This is where the most of the fight is going to happen and most of the exchanges of the fight will happen. I’m really working on seeing if I can get him with some good knees, some good elbows. Throwing him, tripping him, getting to his back. That’s the plan.”
De Ridder is a realist too, and he’s conscious of giving the fans what they want. He knows all too well that striking matches between grapplers aren’t particularly fan-friendly:
”Who wants to see us strike? We’re both decent strikers but come on, let’s have some fun. Like Demian Maia and Ben Askren in the first round. Nobody wants to see that s**t.”
Reinier De Ridder talked about his gameplan for fighting Bo Nickal in a recent interview with MMAFighting on their official YouTube channel:
