Reinier de Ridder is ready for a fresh start after leaving his former home at ONE Championship and inking a deal to join the UFC roster.
There’s no secret that things gotten contentious between the Singapore based promotion and several fighters over the past couple of years but de Ridder isn’t trying to bash his former employers now that he has a new home. Like any job, de Ridder says there was good and bad about his years spent in ONE Championship but he definitely knew it was time for a change.
“It’s been good for a long time and it’s been bad for a pretty long time now as well,” de Ridder told MMA Fighting. “I think they’re struggling in a sense and some stuff is not being handled the way it should be but it is what it is.
“I had a very good run in the beginning. They gave me a lot of fights. In ONE, I was able to make it a full time thing with fighting. So I’m very grateful for that part. But the last couple of years weren’t that great.”
After fighting three times in 2022, de Ridder’s activity dwindled without a single fight in 2023 and then only competing once in 2024 before ultimately leaving the promotion. He did make an appearance in 2023 for a grappling match under the ONE umbrella but his activity was obviously far greater earlier in his career.
When his contract ended, de Ridder fought once for UAE Warriors before signing his deal to join the UFC roster. He never knew for certain if he was going to fight for the UFC but de Ridder admits every fighter dreams about that opportunity at one time or another.
“I’m looking forward to getting in there,” de Ridder said about his UFC debut. “Looking forward to getting some activity. I’m very happy, very psyched, it’s cool.
“It’s the league we all look up to. Every fighter wants to fight in the UFC. Every fan wants to watch UFC. It’s been asked a lot of times over the years so it’s very cool to finally be there. Of course, it was clear I wasn’t going to keep going with ONE. But there were different options. But when you start fighting, when you start this crazy career, everybody wants to fight in the UFC. I’m getting to the later stages of my career so this was the moment to either go get it or never do it again. I had to go to UFC.”
Despite holding two titles simultaneously in ONE, de Ridder admits the announcement that he signed with UFC got him more attention than anything he experienced with his former promotion.
“That’s the crazy part,” de Ridder said. “I went through every stage of an MMA fighter’s career. I went from unranked to title challenger to two-division champion and it always got some traction. People liked it and respected it.
“But now I just started all over again. So I go fight unranked again [in UFC] and it’s a bigger deal than becoming a two-division champion. It’s funny.”
As far as the biggest differences between the two organizations, de Ridder pointed to a pair of changes that he’s actually excited about now that he’s with the UFC.
“The UFC is the UFC of course, so it was always the goal,” de Ridder said. “Always in the back of my mind. There’s a lot of different perks over ONE. Next to that, the weight thing is a bit more clear, there’s drug testing. It’s just better.”
When it comes to weight classes, ONE actually instituted much different rules than those used by the UFC or other promotions in the United States. ONE has hydration testing in hopes of curbing extreme weight cuts and the divisions there were altered so every weight class is actually different than those in other promotions.
For instance, de Ridder previously reigned as champion at both middleweight and light heavyweight but in ONE middleweight is from 185 to 205 pounds while light heavyweight is 205 to 225 pounds. In organizations like the UFC, middleweight stops at 185 pounds before moving up to light heavyweight.
De Ridder says the early implementation of the hydration testing and the weight class changes were good at ONE but over time he feels the program just didn’t work.
“The idea of the hydration test was amazing,” de Ridder said. “In the beginning, they had some secondary measures to be sure that you really were around that weight when you fought as well. But over the years, those were eroded a bit and the guys just kept getting bigger and I was the only dummy who still made the 93kgs (205 pounds) with breakfast and some water. Some stuff’s changed there on this point.
“Look I’m not looking forward to the weight cut and there is still a way to negate the weight cut. There is a way to stop all the fighters from cutting weight but the hydration test is not enough, as you’ve seen.”
When it comes to drug testing, ONE Championship actually stated as far back as 2019 that athletes were being tested but de Ridder says his bigger concerns came down to the out-of-competition testing required under the UFC’s anti-doping program.
“In this regard, the UFC is the place to go,” de Ridder said. “America is the place to be for fighting clean athletes. That’s just better.”
Perhaps what he’s happiest about with his move is that the 34-year-old Dutch fighter is getting back to business sooner rather than later with his first fight in the UFC booked for Nov. 9 against Gerald Meerschaert.
He pays credit to his manager Ali Abdelaziz for wasting no time getting the deal done and helping him book a fight and de Ridder promises that he’s going to soak in every aspect of this opportunity.
“I’m very, very grateful for this,” de Ridder said. “Ali is working his magic.
“It’s pretty cool. This is something I put my mind to, to try and enjoy all this stuff as well. I’ve always been a bit of a hater with all the interviews and all the people coming up to me and asking me stuff. But I’m trying to bit more grateful about this stuff.”
