Reinier de Ridder called it exactly what it was. “What the f*ck are we doing?”
The Dutch submission specialist wasn’t talking about his opponent. He was talking about the sport’s most dangerous tradition: extreme weight cutting. De Ridder’s outburst, captured post-fight by MMA Fighting, has reignited a conversation the UFC has spent years avoiding.
De Ridder (21-4 MMA, 4-2 UFC) returns Saturday at UFC Fight Night 285 in Sacramento against Roman Dolidze (15-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC). The fight itself is compelling. The context is grim.
De Ridder blamed his two-fight losing streak on weight cuts. Not skill. Not age. Not matchmaking. Weight cuts.
“I know what I can do,” de Ridder told MMA Junkie. “In the last fight, I wasn’t able to…”
The sentence trails off. It doesn’t need to finish.
The science is unforgiving. Extreme dehydration strains the kidneys, elevates heart rate, and reduces brain volume. Fighters have died. Yang Jian Bing. Leandro Souza. Both during weight cuts. The list of career-ending injuries tied to rapid dehydration is longer than the UFC’s public acknowledgment of it.
De Ridder’s frustration is structural. He believes the promotion has the data. He believes they’ve seen the incidents. He sees no action.
“Something has to be done,” he said.
The Dolidze matchup is a stylistic gift. Dolidze is a pressure fighter with heavy hands. De Ridder is a grappler with a black belt in jiu-jitsu and a 6’3″ frame that belongs at light heavyweight. The odds reflect the shift: de Ridder is a slight favorite at -130, with Dolidze at +110.
De Ridder’s move back to light heavyweight is the real story. His natural division. His actual body weight. No more cutting from 205 to 185. No more drained, hollow versions of himself stepping into the cage.
His pre-fight quote about Dolidze was characteristically blunt. “I’m just going to kill this motherf*cker.”
The bravado is real. The underlying concern is not resolved. A win on Saturday doesn’t fix the system.
What would? Concrete reforms exist. Same-day weigh-ins would eliminate the 24-hour rehydration window that enables extreme cuts. Hydration testing, already used in some regional promotions, measures urine specific gravity to ensure athletes aren’t stepping on the scale dangerously dehydrated. More weight classes would spread athletes across lighter, safer gaps. A percentage-based system, where fighters can only cut a fixed percentage of their walk-around weight, would cap the damage.
The UFC has tried none of these at scale. The promotion’s stance has been consistent: weight cutting is the fighter’s responsibility. The sport’s economics reward the biggest fighter in the room, not the healthiest one.
Promoters resist change because change costs money. Fighters resist change because they’ve normalized the abuse. “It’s part of the game” is the sport’s most dangerous sentence.
De Ridder’s platform changes the calculus. He is not a fringe voice. He is a top-tier UFC fighter with a microphone and a track record of success. When he says the weight cut nearly destroyed his career, it carries weight.
The fight against Dolidze is a redemption arc. The real fight is against a system that endangers every athlete who steps on the scale.
As de Ridder asks, “What the f*ck are we doing?”
The answer will define the sport’s future.
💡 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Q: What did Reinier de Ridder say about weight cutting?
- A: He said ‘What the f*ck are we doing?’ and blamed his two-fight losing streak on extreme weight cuts, not skill or age.
- Q: What are the dangers of extreme weight cutting in MMA?
- A: Dehydration strains kidneys, raises heart rate, reduces brain volume, and has caused deaths like Yang Jian Bing and Leandro Souza.
- Q: When does Reinier de Ridder fight next?
- A: He faces Roman Dolidze at UFC Fight Night 285 in Sacramento.