Bo Nickal believes Reinier de Ridder’s loss to Brendan Allen may have cost the Dutchman a title shot.
Former ONE Championship two-division champion de Ridder (21-3 MMA, 4-1 UFC) enjoyed an electrifying start to his UFC career, racking up four consecutive victories in less than nine months, including a win over Nickal (8-1 MMA, 5-1 UFC) at UFC Des Moines last May.
“RDR” appeared to be on the brink of earning a title opportunity and was scheduled to face fellow surging contender Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez in October. After Hernandez withdrew due to injury, Brendan Allen stepped in at the eleventh hour and pulled off a major upset, stopping de Ridder and completely derailing his title charge.
With de Ridder now forced to regroup and rebuild, Nickal believes Nassourdine Imavov (17-4 MMA, 9-2 UFC) who defeated Caio Borralho in the main event at UFC Paris may have jumped the line.
“I would have said RDR, obviously, had he won his last fight similar to how he did coming into the UFC,” Nickal told Helen Yee when asked who he thinks might be next in line to challenge current middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev. “But you know, after that, you got to give the nod to (Nassourdine) Imavov.”
Nickal made his return to the Octagon at UFC 322 in October, rebounding emphatically from his crushing defeat to de Ridder with a career-best performance, knocking out Rodolfo Vieira via a spectacular head kick.
While he acknowledges that he still has work to do before entering the title discussion at 185 pounds, Nickal believes that by the time he reaches that level, Chimaev is unlikely to still be the reigning middleweight champion.
“I feel like when you look at historically how often he's been competing and (when you) just try to get into his mindset a little bit, I don't necessarily know that he'll compete for much longer or even at middleweight,” Nickal said of the current champion. “He might go up to 205 (pounds). I've heard that maybe he wants to go back down to 170. So I'm not counting on it, but it would be a great fight. So I just got to take care of business on my end. He's obviously done that on his end, and I just need to keep improving, getting better, and winning fights.”
