ONE Championship’s middleweight king, Reinier De Ridder, did not close out 2022 as he had hoped. The former two-division king was defeated by ONE Interim Heavyweight World Champion Anatoly Malykhin by first-round TKO in their December meeting on Prime Video. But “The Dutch Knight” is taking the loss in stride.
“S*** happens, man. I’ve never lost a fight before. I’ve never really been hurt in training. It was tough, but I was always prepared for this. I know that if you stick around long enough, if you look for the largest challenges – which I do – s*** happens,” De Ridder told ONE.