UFC Des Moines went down last Saturday night (May 3, 2025) inside Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa, leaving several fighters feeling the post-fight blues. Among them was Deiveson Figueiredo, who lost to Cory Sandhagen via second-round technical knockout (TKO) as a result of a terrible knee injury (see it again here).
And Santiago Ponzinibbio, who was stopped via strikes by Daniel Rodriguez (highlights). But which fighter is suffering from the worst post-fight hangover, now a few days removed from the show?
Coming into the event, Nickal was eager to show fight fans, especially his critics, that was ready to take the next big step against the toughest test of his young mixed martial arts (MMA) career in the former of Reinier de Ridder. A fight the wrestling standout said he asked for.
Unfortunately for Nickal, he fell flat in the biggest fight of his career.
And that’s all because de Ridder showed him that there are indeed levels to this game. For the majority of the fight, the former ONE double-champion had his way with Nickal, frustrating him with his strikes, leaving him bewildered as to what to do when things got hot.
In the second round, “The Dutch Knight” once again put the pressure on and started tagging Nickal at will, ultimately hurting him with one devastating knee after another until one found the liver sweet spot, sending the former three-time NCAA Division 1 wrestling champion down to the canvas in defeat.
“Grateful for the highs and lows,” Nickal wrote in a short social media post. “I’ll be back.”
For Nickal, it was a hard lesson to learn in suffering his first-ever defeat, and will now have to hear the endless criticism from all the people who felt he was over-hyped and predicted he would lose once he faced a tough challenge.
At least he still has this guy backing him.
Nickal will have to literally go back to the drawing board and fix what needs fixing, and judging by Saturday’s performance there’s a lot he needs to work on if he ever wants to be truly successful in the fight game. De Ridder is legit, but he is not the cream of the crop in a division full of sharks.
But Nickal is still very young in this fight game and has the time to get sharper, get better, which all comes with experience. Since making his UFC debut in March 2023, he has only competed five times, so perhaps fighting a bit more frequently is a good start.
As far as what could potentially be next for him, perhaps a fight against Chris Curtis is in order. Curtis has had a pretty rough stretch of later, losing two straight fights at the hands of Brendan Allen and Roman Kopylov.
It would be an obvious step back for Nickal, but it’s a necessary one.
For complete UFC Des Moines results, coverage, and highlights click HERE.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
