Anatoliy Malykhin vs Reinier de Ridder Prediction: De Ridder will be extremely cautious

Prediction for the ONE 166 Anatoliy Malykhin vs Reinier de Ridder fight which will take place on March 1st. Who will turn out to be stronger? Check the team conditions! Several betting options are available.

Anatoliy Malykhin started his way in martial arts with freestyle wrestling, won the MMA World Championship as an amateur, but found himself in the professional ranks. Here, he has knocked out his opponents once; all of his victories have come early, and he has yet to suffer a defeat.

After beating de Ridder in December 2022, Anatoliy finally faced Arjan Bhullar (who had been avoiding the fight for a long time), finished him in the third round, and took the heavyweight belt (Malykhin already had the light heavyweight belt).

The Russians want another middleweight title. But it will be challenging - and it's not even about the opponent's personality (although de Ridder is a legendary champion and was undefeated until Malykhin met him). It's about Anatoliy - how his body will cope with the hard weight race, how much he will lose in strength and speed, is still unknown, and we can only guess about it. It's good that the average weight in ONE is 93 kg, not 83 kg, for example, in UFC and Russian leagues.

Reinier de Ridder is a top-notch grappler who has successfully adapted all his wrestling skills to MMA (most of his wins have come via submission).

In 2020, the Dutchman became a two-time champion, winning the middleweight and bantamweight titles dominantly. He managed to defend each of the titles, but then he ran into Malykhin, and then you know what happened - he had to part with his flyweight belt.

After losing to Malykhin, the Dutchman had a grappling about with champion Ty Ruotolo at ONE Fight Night 10 and lost by a split decision.

De Ridder will lay down his bones but will do his best to get into the ring as soon as possible. But to do that, he'll have to break through Malykhin's heavy boxing short bursts, which looks like a non-trivial task (it didn't work at all last time).

But it's still not enough to move Malykhin - Anatoly will crush his opponent with his physical strength. He has to tire him first and then try to catch him on the rebound. Therefore, de Ridder will be extremely cautious in the first half of the fight, avoiding dangerous close quarters and moving around a lot to avoid getting crushed.