Reinier De Ridder Eager To Avenge Previous Loss To Anatoly Malykhin At ONE 166: Qatar

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ONE Middleweight MMA World Champion Reinier de Ridder was riding high as a two-weight king. But that all changed when he met Anatoly Malykhin, who stripped "The Dutch Knight" of his light heavyweight gold to become a two-division ONE World Champion himself. On Friday, 1 March, De Ridder is ready for revenge.

De Ridder meets Malykhin in a highly anticipated rematch in the main event of ONE 166: Qatar, with "Sladkiy" gunning for the Dutchman's middleweight crown. Before running into Malykhin, De Ridder had found unrelenting success across 16 performances with 11 submissions to boot.

That all changed when the Russian downed him inside one round in December 2022 at ONE on Prime Video 5. In hindsight, De Ridder admits his confidence got the better of him. Since then, though, he's tended to his oversights and feels he won't be caught out twice in a row.

"If you win 16 in a row - and to be honest, not to seem arrogant, because I'm not trying to be arrogant - but it always went pretty easily in the fight, right? I never really got touched. I never really got hurt. I never really faced any real adversity. It was always like that. There was a guy in front of me, I'd walk toward him, take him down, and choke him out basically," De Ridder said.

"So in my head, it kind of got stuck that this is how fights go and I can do this to anybody in the world. I could until I couldn't, and it clearly showed when I got knocked out viciously, and I've been building back ever since."

While De Ridder has worked vigorously to improve his all-round talents, an aspect of his attributes he's primarily focused on is his mental state. At ONE on Prime Video 5, Malykhin rushed De Ridder like a bull in a china shop, causing the 33-year-old to hesitate in his approach.

Malykhin has used that ethos throughout his career to a high rate of success as he remains unbeaten across 12 outings to this day. But next time around, De Ridder will be ready for the pressure.

"That's not who I am normally, as you said, and it's not the person I want to be, so it definitely showed in the fight, as well. I wasn't moving like myself. I wasn't as sharp as I normally am. If I look back at those takedowns, they were s***. If I look back at my striking, my movement, it's like I'm looking at a shell of myself," De Ridder said.

"And then another thing that's very important to me is my mental game. So I've really looked inward a lot. Over the last year, I've really tried to make some changes in the way I approach the fight, and the way I view myself as a fighter. So yeah, let's hope it all shows in a couple of weeks.

"The most important thing is not to get hit, of course, as we've seen, so the defense is a very critical part of it. And to be able to remain calm under pressure, to remain calm under these heavy shots that he's going to be throwing. That's the most important thing I've been working on."