Reinier De Ridder has opened up about his extreme weight loss and resultant gain after finally giving up on the cut to 185lb.
The former ONE FC double champion has struggled to keep up the pace in his last few UFC fights after being forced to make the full way down to middleweight since leaving Asia. He got off to a flying start in the octagon, but has since lost to Caio Borralho and Brendan Allen.
His defeat to Allen saw his coach call the fight off after the fourth round as he battled exhaustion and generally was badly beaten. And after another loss, he is moving up officially to light-heavyweight, where he was at his best in ONE FC with their different weigh-in protocols.
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Reinier De Ridder moves up officially to end brutal weight cuts
After a few years of brutally finding a way to get down in weight, Reinier De Ridder has confirmed that his next fight will be at 205lb. During a fan Q&A on his YouTube page, he also recalled the severity of his cuts, and how they left him feeling in training on fight night.
It’s standard for fighters to deplete themselves to get to fight weight with a perceived advantage. But De Ridder’s case appears to be particularly brutal as he recalled making the 186 extended limit before refuelling and ending up at 215lb just around a day later for fight night.
“So at middleweight I would get up to like 215lb – so like 96kg or something like that – on fight night,” he recalled. “But I think the weight cut got worse and worse every time I did it, it was just a big stress on my body.
“In ONE I used to fight at 205lb because we kind of didn’t do weight cuts there, we kind of tried to stop people cutting weight with hydration tests and everything. My natural walk around weight was like 210lb at the time.
“So I wouldn’t really cut weight, I would just eat a little less the few days before and just make 205lb the night before very easily.”