ONE middleweight world champion Reinier de Ridder is preparing to dip his toe back into submission grappling at “ONE Fight Night 10: Johnson vs. Moraes III” on Prime Video, and he plans to do it properly this time.
“The Dutch Knight” is set to tackle American grappling prodigy Tye Ruotolo at the promotion’s landmark U.S. debut on May 5. The historic event goes down at the sold-out 1STBANK Center in Colorado.
This showdown won’t be de Ridder’s first foray into the grappling-only rule set. The 32-year-old fought his next opponent’s coach, Andre Galvao, to a draw in the sport at ONE X in March 2022.
That bout took place just a month after de Ridder’s middleweight title defense against former welterweight king Kiamrian Abbasov. The quick turnaround, he says, meant that he had little time to switch gears from MMA to submission grappling.
“The last time around, grappling with the teacher, professor Andre, I didn’t really have time to prepare. It was three weeks after a fight,” de Ridder recalled.
“I flew halfway around the world twice. I wasn’t really fully prepared. So, it’s cool that I got to prepare very specifically for it this time. I can’t wait to show it off.”
This time around, however, the Breda native has the luxury of a full camp to prepare himself for battle.
He is making the most of it too, as he sought out some of the best minds in the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world.
“Gordon (Ryan) and John Danaher have been a great help in that area. I thought I knew a couple of tricks, but they’ve really opened the book for me,” he said.
“It’s very cool to be welcomed there. They’ve really helped me get my game to a new level.”
De Ridder is one of the very best grapplers in MMA today, making him a natural choice for crossover bouts against submission grappling stars.
The BJJ black belt has pulled off an impressive 11 submissions among his 16 professional MMA wins.
While he is still mixing in the odd MMA-specific session during his training camp for Ruotolo, de Ridder says his grappling-heavy schedule will make him an even greater submission threat under either rule set going forward.
“It’s been very cool to focus on grappling for the last four months. I’ve only done some MMA stuff once, twice, or three times a week. But grappling has been the main focus (this time). I’ve been grappling twice a day,” he added.
“Normally in an MMA camp, I might grapple four times a week and do four sessions a week. Now I get that in two days. It’s very cool to see how my game is growing.”
