Reinier “The Dutch Kinight” de Ridder, 31, of Breda, North Brabant, Netherlands and Vitaly Bigdash, 37, Rostov-on-Don, Rostov, Russia headlined “ONE 159“. The ONE Championship event was held at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang, Singapore on July 22, 2022.

“ONE 159” featured four Muay Thai fights, four mixed martial arts matches and one kickboxing contest. As the reigning ONE Middleweight World Champion, de Ridder defended his belt from Bigdash in the main event of the evening.

Mohamad Sulaiman served as the referee of the title bout. He stopped the fight after 3 minutes and 29 seconds in the first round after de Ridder submitted Bigdash via inverted triangle.

Having defeated Bigdash at “ONE 159”, de Ridder now holds a professional MMA record of 16 wins and 0 loss. On the other hand, the Russian MMA fighter now has 12 wins and 3 losses.

Bigdash became the ONE Middleweight World Champion on October 9, 2015 and was dethroned by “The Burmese Python” Aung La N Sang, 37, of Myitkyina, Kachin, Myanmar on June 30, 2017. De Ridder dethroned the Burmese MMA fighter on October 30, 2020 and has been holding the title since.

Aung also became the ONE Light Heavyweight World Champion on February 23, 2018 but was dethroned by de Ridder on April 28, 2021. The Dutch champion still holds the title and has yet to defend it.

“ONE 159” marked de Ridder’s seventh ONE Championship win. A total of 11 countries were represented at the event namely Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

De Ridder solely represented the Netherlands at “ONE 159”. Russia was represented by Bigdash, Vladimir Kuzmin, Aslanbek Zikreev, Jamal Yusupov and Marat Gafurov.

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In 1995, de Ridder started his training in judo. In 2009, he started his training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

On June 1, 2013, de Ridder made his professional MMA debut. Before making his ONE Championship debut on January 25, 2019, he competed in Gladiators Fighting Championship, German King Cup, Superior Fighting Championship, 360 Promotion, World Fighting League MMA, Hit Fighting Championship and Extreme Fighting Championship.