Robert Whittaker foresees his upcoming fight with Reinier de Ridder as one that can re-align his path to becoming UFC middleweight champion once again. Whittaker does battle with RDR at UFC Abu Dhabi on July 26 in the headline attraction of that card. The contest between Whittaker and de Ridder pits the number five ranked contender against the number thirteen ranked contender at 185 pounds, respectively. While speaking on Submission Radio ahead of this fight, Robert Whittaker discussed the machinations of this match up with the former two division ONE Championship titleholder when Whittaker said.
“He’s an awkward guy. He’s of the same mentality, the same school of thought where you just walk forward and punch people, right? I understand the headspace I’ve got to be in for this fight, and I think it is a great precursor to what I want to do moving forward. His grappling style is pretty cool as well. He’s kind of one of these guys who actually weaponizes a lot of the stuff that he does-comes forward and just brings it forward.”
“I want to set a statement in this next fight. I want to really, you know, I want to really send a message and work my way up to the title, so like, that’s kind of my focus right now.”
Robert Whittaker and his proximity to the middleweight belt
Robert Whittaker is a former middleweight champion as mentioned earlier and while he is coming off of a loss technically, he is still not that far outside of the title challenger sphere. Whittaker's last fight was a loss to Khamzat Chimaev in Oct. of last year with that UFC 308 win securing Chimaev a title shot against Dricus du Plessis at UFC 319. The current number one ranked contender at middleweight is Nassourdine Imavov who is electing to serve as the back up fighter for that Aug. championship bout with DDP and Chimaev.
Observing the remainder of the UFC's middleweight top five, only number two ranked Sean Strickland and number four ranked contender Israel Adesanya don't have their formally booked next assignments. There have been some rumblings that perhaps Strickland and Adesanya may run it back for a rematch but nothing has been formally booked as of this writing.
