Reinier de Ridder said earlier this week he didn’t plan on his first UFC main event going five rounds and although that prediction was incorrect, he did prove he can hang with the UFC’s best.

De Ridder edged out former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker by split decision Saturday in the featured bout of a UFC Fight Night event at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi.

The 34-year-old from Netherlands is now off to a 4-0 start in the UFC, previously earning submission wins over Gerald Meerschaert and Kevin Holland plus a technical knockout of Bo Nickal just three months ago.

De Ridder was a two-weight titleholder in ONE Championship at 205 pounds and at heavyweight before losing both of his belts to Anatoly Malykhin in back-to-back contests in 2022 and 2024. The southpaw has bounced around at different weights throughout his career but has never lost when competing as a middleweight. He had a significant size advantage over Whittaker, who began his UFC career as a welterweight before moving up in weight and later winning the 185-pound title.

Saturday’s bout was Whittaker’s first fight of 2025 and his first appearance since a submission loss to Khamzat Chimaev at UFC 308 last October that ended with a face crank that caused significant dental damage to the 34-year-old, who needed multiple teeth removed afterwards. Prior to that loss, Whittaker was coming off a first-round knockout of Ikram Aliskerov.

An early shift in momentum occurred when de Ridder landed a big step-in knee to Whittaker’s body in Round 2, the same strike he used to put away Nickal earlier this year, and he was able to accumulate time in top position to close out the round.

Round 3 began with de Ridder pressuring Whittaker with more knees to the body but Whittaker dropped de Ridder with an overhand right and landed several additional hard shots on the ground.

De Ridder survived, got back to his feet and with Whittaker visibly fatigued he took the former champ down and ended the round on top yet again. The fourth and fifth rounds were spent entirely on the feet as both men slowed down and traded strikes.

Two judges had the bout 48-47 for de Ridder while the dissenting judge scored the 25-minute tilt 48-47 Whittaker. 

After the fight, de Ridder called for the winner of next month’s UFC 319 middleweight title fight between reigning champion Dricus Du Plessis and unbeaten challenger Khamzat Chimaev.

Whittaker wasn’t the only former UFC champ on the card. Two-time bantamweight titleholder Petr Yan returned to action for the first time in eight months against the surging Marcus McGhee in the co-main event.

Yan used his patented switch-stance style and increased his pace and volume as the fight progressed against his southpaw opponent, winning a unanimous three-round decision. 

The 32-year-old Russian, who has closed as the betting favourite in all 15 of his UFC appearances, went 2-0 in 2024 with wins over Song Yadong and Deiveson Figueiredo and extended his winning streak to three before calling for the next title shot.

Merab Dvalishvili is set to defend the belt against Cory Sandhagen in early October at UFC 320. Yan beat Sandhagen in 2021 when the pair competed for an interim title but lost a five-round decision to Dvalishvili in 2023 when they fought in a Fight Night main event before Dvalishvili was champion.

McGhee had built up a 4-0 record in the UFC and the 35-year-old American was taking a massive step-up in competition against the No. 3-ranked Yan with McGhee sitting at No. 12 entering the weekend.

The main card kicked off with Bogdan Guskov knocking out Nikita Krylov late in the first round of a light-heavyweight encounter.

Guskov flattened Krylov with a long right hand and followed up with heavy ground strikes to earn his fourth consecutive stoppage win in the UFC.

The 32-year-old from Uzbekistan is 8-1 over his past nine fights with his lone loss during that stretch coming in his short-notice UFC debut against one-time title challenger Volkan Oezdemir in 2023.

Krylov, meanwhile, is 0-2 in 2025 after being knocked out by Dominick Reyes in their UFC 314 matchup in April.

Canada’s Marc-André Barriault couldn’t build off the momentum he gained from his knockout win in his home province of Quebec earlier this year at UFC 315, losing a decision to Shara Magomedov in a dogged effort at middleweight.

Magomedov split Barriault open with a lead elbow midway through the second round but the Canadian fired back with several heavy punches moments later and appeared to break Magomedov’s nose with a right hand.

Barriault bloodied Magomedov in the clinch but the Russian regained momentum with a series of hard knees. Magomedov continued his high-volume output in the final round and ended up sweeping the scorecards after the fan-friendly bout at 185 pounds. 

Magomedov is 16-1 and coming off his first career losses earlier this year when he dropped a decision to Michael “Venom” Page in February.

Also on the main card, flyweights Asu Almabayev and Jose Ochoa went back and forth for three rounds in a fast-paced tilt with Almabayev getting a unanimous decision win.

Almabayev, 31, implemented a wrestling-heavy game plan against the promising 24-year-old from Peru who took the fight on short notice after Almabayev’s original opponent, Ramazan Temirov, was pulled from the matchup earlier in the month due to a failed drug test.

Ochoa threatened with submissions throughout but was often stuck in a disadvantageous position on the ground. Almabayev had undefeated welterweight Shavkat Rakhmonov, a fellow native of Kazakhstan, in his corner helping coach him.