When Reinier de Ridder stepped into the Octagon at UFC Vancouver, he wasn’t just fighting Brendan Allen; he was fighting to prove that his meteoric rise was no accident. The former ONE double champion came in on a four-fight UFC win streak. He’d already submitted veterans and outworked Robert Whittaker in a five-round battle, establishing himself as one of the UFC’s fastest-rising middleweights. But at the Rogers Arena, that momentum came to a crashing halt.

In a stunning twist of irony, the very thing De Ridder predicted in an interview with ESPN MMA , “Because we’ve seen Brendan fade a little bit in the later rounds in previous fights,” happened to him instead. After seemingly dominating the first round with clinical grappling, ‘The Dutch Knight’ gassed out, lost control of the

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