Image: John Brannigan/Sherdog.com illustration
The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s whirlwind jaunt around the globe continues on Saturday.
In light of the grueling schedule this month, the UFC’s matchmakers have done a credible job with those Fight Nights, and this Saturday’s offering in “Van City” is no exception. The card features most of the promotion’s top Canadian talent, including now-bantamweight highlight machine Charles Jourdain in the top preliminary bout. The main card is anchored by Mike Malott, who will appear in the co-main event, looking to redeem his status as the Great White North’s perpetual Next Big Thing, while Jasmine Jasudavicius might be the closest fighter on the entire card to a title shot—if she can upset Manon Fiorot.
Let us take a look at the six-fight main card of UFC Fight Night 262, also known as UFC Vancouver:
Middleweights
Reinier de Ridder (21-2; 4-0 UFC) vs. Brendan Allen (25-7; 12-4 UFC)Odds: de Ridder (-200); Allen (+170)
“The Dutch Knight” will continue his stunning Octagon run against Allen, who steps in for the injured Anthony Hernandez with the chance to steal some of that momentum and turbocharge his own climb towards title contention.
Put simply, de Ridder has taken the UFC by storm. Joining the promotion last November as a former two-division champ in One Championship after a pair of drubbings at the hands of Anatoly Malykhin, the lanky submission wizard was an intriguing addition to the roster, but few predicted just how successful he would be. Like former middleweight champions Israel Adesanya and Alex Pereira, both of whom won four straight fights in their first year in the UFC to catapult themselves into the title picture, de Ridder has clawed his way up the ladder with a series of eye-opening performances against increasingly stern opposition. If he can make it five straight on Saturday against Allen, the 35-year-old might be fighting for a belt his next time out.
The first pleasant surprise about de Ridder’s middleweight rise has been the “middleweight” part. As a 6-foot-4 athlete who made his bones in ONE’s 205-pound middleweight and 225-pound light heavyweight divisions (while navigating that promotion’s unique hydration protocols) it seemed very fair to wonder whether he would be able to make the 185-pound limit of a conventional middleweight division, and if so, whether he would be have enough left after the weight cut to be able to make his grappling-centric approach work. The answer was a definitive “yes” in both cases, as the Dutchman has made weight without apparent incident in all of his UFC bouts, then gone on to handle business in the cage.
De Ridder’s claim to fame is his jiu-jitsu and rightly so, as he is one of the most dangerous and diverse submission threats in the sport. He is in some ways like an oversized Charles Oliveira: a long-limbed grappler whose frame belies his physical strength, and who is equally adept at grabbing necks or limbs in transition as he is setting up in top position and mauling people. Like “do Bronxs,” de Ridder is aided in the latter pursuit by ground-and-pound that is absolutely brutal yet flies a bit under the radar because it usually ends with a submission.
The goal for de Ridder is to get foes into his world, and his striking and wrestling both serve that goal. His kickboxing is not what you might expect when you picture a 6-foot-4 guy from The Netherlands—he ain’t Remy Bonjasky—but it is effective, and as he has grown in confidence in the Octagon, he has shown that his striking can be an end in itself. Witness his thrashing of Bo Nickal this May, where he teed off on the former freestyle wrestling superstar with a salvo of very Dutch-looking knees for the TKO win. His wrestling is similarly quirky but effective, consisting of a lot of trips and body locks from the clinch and single-legs against the fence, where he can leverage his long frame rather than rely on his shot from the outside, which can be slow.
Allen’s route to Vancouver this Saturday has been longer and more meandering than de Ridder’s, but it is to his credit that he was an easy choice to step up when Hernandez withdrew from the card six weeks ago. “All In” has had enough ups and downs since joining the UFC that it’s slightly shocking to realize he isn’t even 30 yet.
Allen is a large-framed middleweight whose best weapon is his offensive grappling, and who tends to rise and fall with his ability to bring that weapon to bear on his opponent. In that respect, he is not too different from de Ridder, or like an early-career Luke Rockhold, another fighter I’ve compared him to before. Like Rockhold, Allen’s striking is potent offensively, especially his kicks, but he has struggled with defense and durability.
He has worked diligently on those shortcomings—where his first two UFC losses saw him knocked silly, he stood in tough against Hernandez and Nassourdine Imavov in more recent setbacks—but even if he continues his pattern of steady improvement, this is a tough style matchup for Allen. De Ridder is physically bigger, an even more dangerous grappler than Allen, and given the arsenal of close-quarters weaponry he has flashed in his last two outings, he figures to get the best of the striking exchanges as well. Add in his wealth of experience in five-round fights, and it becomes difficult to picture the Louisianan’s routes to victory.
Allen could pull off the upset here—plenty of people, myself included, have written off his chances in the past and had to eat our words—but the ways in which he might do it all feel like low-percentage outcomes. The pick is for de Ridder to find the finish in Round 2, likely a submission after a knockdown and/or some heavy ground strikes.
Jump To »
de Ridder vs. Allen
Holland vs. Malott
Vera vs. Zahabi
Fiorot vs. Jasudavicius
Gibson vs. Aori
Nelson vs. Frevola
The Prelims