A middleweight fight between Kevin Holland and Reiner de Ridder has been announced for UFC 311 in Inglewood, California on January 18th.
The 32-year-old Holland comes into the fight off a TKO loss to Roman Dolidze at UFC 307 early last month.
That left ‘The Trailblazer’ with a 1-2 run in 2024 overall, having started off with a unanimous decision defeat to Michael ‘Venom’ Page, followed by a submission victory over Michal Oleksiejczuk.
While Holland’s UFC career started strongly with eight wins in his first ten fights, he’s since struggled to maintain anything like that kind of consistency, going 5-7 (+1nc).
Now Holland moves on to fight a relative newcomer in Reiner de Ridder, a former two-division champion over at the ONE FC promotion.
The 34-year-old de Ridder made his UFC debut earlier this month at UFC Fight Night 247 and emerged with a submission victory over Gerald Meerschaert, taking his overall career record to 18-2.
Holland vs. de Ridder joins a UFC 311 card that is expected to be headlined by a lightweight title fight between current champion Islam Makhachev and Arman Tsarukyan, while a five-round fight between former light-heavyweight champions Jiri Prochazka and Jamahal Hill takes the co-main event spot and the likes of Jailton Almeida vs Sergey Spivak featuring elsewhere on the main card.
