Reinier de Ridder has been doing everything possible to understand what went wrong in his last fight.
De Ridder suffered his first octagon loss against Brendan Allen in their UFC Fight Night 262 headliner this past October. De Ridder’s body eventually broke down at the end of Round 4, prompting his corner to throw in the towel.
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Allen marked the fifth fight for de Ridder (21-3 MMA, 4-1 UFC) in the calendar year, and his body failed to hold up after the active schedule.
“I remember walking in, seeing the ref say ‘go,'” de Ridder said on his YouTube channel. “I get close to (Allen), I think I hit him once, get close, grab him, throw him like I like to throw people with the Harai goshi, get on top, feel pretty much in control but don’t really feel myself, as normally once I take somebody’s back I’d be close to a choke. But I wasn’t able to choke him. I remember having my left arm around his neck, having it pretty deep and just being unable to get my right arm free, and this is something that rarely happens to me, something that has never happened to me in a fight before.
“Then I get up, and I feel all the energy leaving my body basically. I was happy that I made it to the stool, sat down. I don’t remember too much from what they said in the corner, but I go out, I see him again, I see the takedown is there. I shoot and take him down and basically from that point, I don’t really remember anything. I do feel proud that Harun (Ozkan) was able to make the decision, make the call there. He saw that I wasn’t myself. It was a big decision for him to make, to stop the fight and say, ‘This is enough.’ I feel very proud of him for doing that.”
De Ridder takes on Caio Borralho (17-2 MMA, 7-1 UFC) at UFC 326 on March 7 from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. He is searching for answers ahead of his return.
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“We’re going to get a VO2 max test because my cardio is sh*t,” de Ridder said. “You get a baseline. I got my bloodwork done and see what I can do to improve this stuff. In the recovery process, I’ve been documenting everything, trying to figure out where I’m at physically exactly. I’m tracking my workouts like a b*tch.
“First I looked at the bloodwork I did two weeks before the fight, found out where my values were. Basically in the gutter on all accounts. …The guys at Regenerate, RX, really helped me with this, and they put me on a specific protocol supplement-wise for recovery in that sense. I’ve been looking at specific therapies to help me get that red blood cell count up and to recover physically.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC 326: How Reinier de Ridder intends to fix ‘sh*t’ cardio
