Preview: UFC Des Moines ‘Sandhagen vs. Figueiredo’

Middleweights

Bo Nickal (7-0, 4-0 UFC) vs. Reinier de Ridder (19-2, 2-0 UFC)

ODDS: Nickal (-325), de Ridder (+260)

An elite collegiate wrestler who nearly made the Olympics, Nickal was a blue-chip prospect immediately upon announcing his transition to mixed martial arts, and that hype only got stronger once he won his first fight via knockout in just 33 seconds. The UFC unsurprisingly jumped on Nickal from there, putting him through Dana White’s Contender Series—where he once again earned two quick wins—and then gave him two more layups before starting to finally move him up the ladder in 2024. Nickal’s offensive potency isn’t in question at this point, at least given a blank slate, as he has knockout power and some grappling ability in his back pocket. As with most raw prospects, it’s mostly a question of how he handles adversity whenever he starts to come close to his ceiling. A second-round finish of Cody Brundage was generally a positive sign, as he ate some offense and had to do much more work than usual to finally put away the Factory X rep, but it’s hard to figure out what to make of his decision victory over Paul Craig in November. Faced with the first real submission threat of his career, Nickal was content to win an extremely ugly striking match where he landed the best shots of the fight but made little else happen. Optimists came away thinking that the fight was some smart game planning and much-needed experience that should make Nickal more comfortable on the feet going forward; pessimists saw it as a bad sign that Nickal was so easily able to be dissuaded from using his best weapons against a beatable opponent. If that performance suggested Nickal still needs some more seasoning, he’s not getting it here. Instead, he goes for a middleweight ranking against de Ridder.

De Ridder had a highly successful career in ONE, primarily as a light heavyweight, before landing in the UFC and cutting to middleweight. Given all that experience, the Dutchman is extremely confident in an approach that probably wouldn’t work for most other fighters. De Ridder is not the best athlete—though he’s much better off in that aspect down at 185 pounds—but he’s gigantic for the middleweight division, which makes his awkward striking powerful enough to be taken seriously, as it serves as his entry into an ugly wrestling game and creative grappling attack. There’s often a lot of risk involved, but as long as de Ridder has physical contact with an opponent, he’s always hunting for some sort of fight-ending submission. He finds it more often than not, even if he’s as exhausted as he was in his UFC debut against Gerald Meerschaert, which saw him score a third-round submission once both men were tired. Ironically, de Ridder might be best off following Nickal’s game plan from last time out, as he’s large and powerful enough to get the better of a long-range striking match. However, the Dutchman’s clear goal is to crash into his opponent, and that’s where things figure to get interesting. De Ridder’s awkwardness and sheer size have a decent chance of making Nickal uncomfortable enough to find a submission, but the undefeated American Top Team rep also figures to be at his best if this fight turns into some constant scrambling, as he’s clearly the better wrestler and just needs to not get caught rather than worrying about any sort of positional dominance. This should be fascinating and will likely be messy, but at the end of the day, it feels like Nickal can coast this out given de Ridder’s questionable gas tank. The pick is Nickal via third-round stoppage.

Jump To »
Sandhagen vs. Figueiredo
Nickal vs. de Ridder
Ponzinibbio vs. Rodriguez
Jackson vs. Marcos
Sidey vs. Smotherman
Jones vs. Stephens
The Prelims