Reinier de Ridder quits on the stool at UFC Vancouver
UFC's Rogers Arena event exposed two major ongoing problems.
The last 12 months for former ONE Middleweight & Light Heavyweight champion Reinier de Ridder in UFC have demonstrated the greatest strengths — and weaknesses — with the promotion’s talent development process.
RdR’s loss at UFC’s Vancouver Fight Night in the Rogers Arena to late-replacement Brendan Allen was nothing short of inexplicable.
Imagine if de Ridder had faced his original opponent, Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez.
Hernandez got a decision win over Allen eight months ago. I reckon he probably would have obtained an early finish against Saturday’s version of RdR. At least it would have been a star-making performance for someone.
It wasn’t even the most glaringly shocking happening at the event, as MMA’s atrocious week-to-week officiating problems resurfaced in Kyle Nelson’s TKO-but-not-really-a-TKO win. You can thank the man that the late Jordan Breen nicknamed “Deck Tan” Dan Miragliotta for yet another miscalculation. Hope you didn’t place a wager on that finish.
With the complete symbiotic dependency of internalized gambling and prop-bet plays, the chickens are starting to come home to roost for UFC.
(That is a topic worthy of a separate article later this week. We’ll be calling out how bad MMA officiating is, how it got to this point, and who, most importantly, is responsible for this crisis.)
How can you bet on fights when you know there’s going to be at least one major screw job every show? Mark Shapiro may not realize the scope of the problem he has on his hands.
The UFC match-makers still book fights using the Joe Silva circular firing squad model, but no longer have the depth of talent Silva relied on.
Rather than adapting to current circumstances, they are cannibalizing what potential stars they have.
Value extraction vs. talent development
The strange Reinier de Ridder-Brendan Allen-Fluffy Hernandez triangle exposes all of the upside and downside to UFC’s current matchmaking system.
The fact that RdR was able to headline a UFC Vancouver event with a $2.7M gate demonstrates the raw marketing power of TKO to book anyone in a main event and sell an arena out. It’s autopilot mode. So what’s the downside to UFC’s current system?
The downside is the public (eventually) wising up and realizing that fighters marketed by UFC as “top contenders” really aren’t top contenders at all.
RdR’s 12-month UFC record is a perfect example of this.
A win over .500 fighter Gerald Meerschaert at the APEX warehouse, a flashy and dominating win over journeyman Kevin Holland at UFC 311, a win over the untested Bo Nickal in Iowa, and a split decision win over Robert Whittaker in Abu Dhabi.
On paper, this record doesn’t look bad. But that’s the point: On paper. These are low-to-midcard UFC talents with lots of wins on their resumes, but where does it lead? How valuable is defeating a talent with a padded record of 15 wins in this 2025 MMA landscape?
It’s a testament to UFC’s brand and marketing power, through sheer will, convincing the public that if they deem someone to be a contender, then it must be true. It’s not. And the quicker the public smartens up to this, the more dangerous this game becomes for matchmakers Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard.
UFC got a good, if not great, year of value extraction out of marketing Reinier de Ridder. They got a $2.7M gate in Vancouver with him as the headliner.
But now what? RdR didn’t lose to Fluffy Hernandez in a star-making performance. Yes, UFC isn’t supposed to be professional wrestling. Still, the flip side is the complete lack of foresight regarding talent development and creating a pathway for fighters to have lengthy careers. It’s burn-and-churn.
Talent development as it relates to the current state of affairs with MMA agents and managers, is a separate conversation. UFC is not a bystander in this process.
The current APEX warehouse volume system is not consistently developing enough durable talent for UFC. Promotions like ONE, RIZIN, and PFL are not consistently creating enough Octagon-ready talent. So now what?
Zoom out for a second from Reinier de Ridder and the long odds against him resurfacing as a legitimate UFC Middleweight contender. Look at the fighters he beat in UFC and where they stand now. None of those fighters appear to be in any position whatsoever to progress to an advanced title match stage in the company.
That’s a major problem moving forward. Given the gossip that has been reported over the last week regarding Paramount’s oversight and creative direction, it doesn’t appear that the current UFC system is going to change any time soon.
Submission Radio presented an argument defending the circumstances surrounding Reinier de Ridder’s UFC Vancouver fight, but, in the process, exposed the unfavorable conditions UFC has created for fighters in this current landscape.
Yes, RdR shouldn’t have attempted five fights in 12 months. We agree. The problem is that UFC’s volume strategy of having 40-plus shows a year means fighters cannot turn down fights without fearing the consequences.
The show must go on. UFC is about to get paid $7.7B over seven years by Paramount. Fighters can’t say no to UFC without paranoia that they will end up getting an even more unfavorable match-up later on. The meat grinder never stops. Besides the obvious problems that come with the human body absorbing three or four MMA fights in a year in terms of physical punishment, there’s an even more glaring problem.
Weight cutting. No matter what solution has been presented (e.g., same-day weigh-ins, 15% variance kicker in California), weight cutting is a massive problem in Mixed Martial Arts. It’s a life-altering practice, no matter what anyone says.
Ask Brian Ortega all about this during his recent stay in mainland China. Dayne Fox at Sherdog recently reviewed the horrible weight-cutting challenges Maycee Barber has faced.
The UFC is not an innocent actor in this situation. Volume booking shows, combined with value extraction, has created a deeply imbalanced matchmaking ecosystem.
On the one hand, we have plenty of fighters on the record, wondering why they can barely get booked more than once a year. On the other hand, we have fighters like Reinier de Ridder in a division like Middleweight getting booked four or five times a year because of how quickly UFC needs to build fresh stars in that division.
UFC ends up overcompensating and aggravating the problem by constantly throwing fighters into no-win situations. You can mask a fighter’s true value by stacking up the wins against other talent with padded records, but eventually the bill comes due.
The big picture question is how much longer the public plays dumb before they start rejecting UFC’s branding that the best fighters in the world fight in the Octagon.
Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack. You can e-mail him at fightopinion - at - protonmail dot com.
From a Bluesky comment by old school Bloody Elbow reader Pud 333 in response to posting this piece:
"I didn't know this show was happening in Vancouver and I live here. Between volume booking and value extraction, I have largely stopped watching the events and I can't remember a time I paid for one it's been so long. It's just slop. I don't understand who is still paying for these ridiculous events" https://bsky.app/profile/pud333.bsky.social/post/3m3kpsfgl5c2d
Larry Ellison's cash may run out sooner than later, we'll see. I have to believe that there are a good number of former granite core fans like me, never missed an event from 1995 up until 2018 or so, then watched less, now cherry pick to the point of rarely watching a fight night except for maybe the main or co-main and not often buying a PPV unless the card is 3 bouts deep for me. I do enjoy bare knuckle (raw feel) and ONE (sense of entertainment) at times. I always enjoy the Nate/Zach writing though !!