Reinier de Ridder is calling Paulo Costa out.
The UFC Middleweight is fresh off the biggest win of his career in July as Ridder got a split decision win over Robert Whittaker. But the hungry star hopes to follow up that win with another strong performance against Brendan Allan on Saturday.
Originally, the UFC middleweight was supposed to do a number one contender’s bout against Anthony Hernandez, but unfortunately, Hernandez had to pull out of the fight due to injury. It was a struggle to find someone in the beginning, but luckily for Ridder, Allan stepped up to the plate.
“It was a bit of a struggle to find somebody so for a couple of days, I thought maybe there would not be any fight.” He told MMA Fighting. “I was a bit disappointed in that but eventually Brendan [Allen] was the guy to step up, take the fight so I’m very happy about it.”
However, Ridder specifically went into one name that was called to replace Hernandez, Paulo Costa. He described the negotiation process with Costa and his team, revealing that they asked for too many stipulations.
“Costa would have been fun just because it’s a fun dude,” de Ridder said. “The entire buildup would have been cool. So he was up first, we were in conversation with him first but he put up too many stipulations.
He wanted a catchweight. He wanted three rounds instead of five. So we said if you don’t want it then you don’t get it. Then we moved onto Brendan, which I’m very happy with as well.”
Ridder wasn’t a fan of all the stipulations that Costa was making for the potential fight. In fact, the middleweight thought that he was bitch for the moves he was making. Still, he would love to scrap with Costa one day.
“I would say if you get an opportunity like that, don’t be a bitch. Just say yes,” de Ridder said about Costa. “Don’t put any stipulations there and he would have had a great chance to be back into title conversation.
“But he put all those stipulations there and we said we’ll move on and see if there’s somebody else who just wants to take the fight. I think maybe even if we said no, Paulo, it has to be middleweight and five rounds, maybe he would have still have taken it but it was already too late unfortunately. Maybe one day. It would be fun to get all the buildup with him someday.”
Check out the full interview where he talks about his upcoming opponent, training, and positioning himself to get a UFC title.