Dricus Du Plessis claims Bo Nickal “gave up” in first career loss to Reinier de Ridder: “Was broken mentally”

UFC middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis believes Bo Nickal gave up and was broken mentally against Reinier de Ridder.

Nickal suffered his first career loss to de Ridder by TKO, as he was hurt by knees to the body. Although de Ridder landed several heavy shots, Du Plessis believes Nickal should have been able to survive those, but instead just took the easy way out.

“With Bo, I mean he’s only had four fights, I think five fights in the UFC,” du Plessis said on The Sias du Plessis Show (h/t MMAFighting). “You’ve got to be careful how you talk in this game. You start talking when you get there. The guys that he fought, he’s fought nobodies. In terms of being able to talk and then going and saying ‘the championship fight was shit,’ ‘these guys can’t wrestle,’ ‘that’s not that impressive, that win.’ Humble pie does wonderful things for a man and I think he got served four pies, full pies.

Dricus Du Plessis wishes Bo Nickal well at the top

“I’m just saying, it was satisfying to watch because you can’t just disrespect the people who’ve done what you wish you could do and I think for this, he had this aura of ‘I am champion,” Dricus Du Plessis added about Nickal. “Nobody can wrestle me. I can out-wrestle anybody’ and he was talking about wrestling, wrestling, wrestling. This is not wrestling. This is fighting and, in my honest opinion, that knee, it was a proper knee, Bo Nickal gave up. Bo Nickal was broken mentally. That’s why he took a knee. He wasn’t dropped by the knee. The knee caught him and it was a good knee. But if you’re getting downed by knees like that, good luck at the top because the shots are a lot harder.”

Dricus Du Plessis also believes Reinier de Ridder exposed the holes in Bo Nickal’s game. Du Plessis believes the fight proved that Nickal has terrible striking defense, while his grappling also needs a lot of work. Instead, Du Plessis believes all Nickal has is great wrestling, but he needs to improve his striking and grappling.

As for Dricus Du Plessis, he doesn’t have his next fight booked. But, he is rumored to face Khamzat Chimaev in a defense of his middleweight title.