Fabricio Andrade is inspired by Anatoly Malykhin’s crushing KO of Reinier de Ridder

Fabricio Andrade hopes to emulate Anatoly Malykhin’s performance against Reinier de Ridder the next time he steps into the Circle.

Malykhin delivered the performance of a lifetime against previously undefeated Dutchman Reinier de Ridder to close out his 2022 at ONE on Prime Video 5 in December. Walking past the former two-division world champion in the opening round, Malykhin captured the ONE light heavyweight world championship, pairing it with the interim heavyweight world title he had earned 10 months prior.

Fabricio Andrade was excited to welcome the newly crowned dual-world champion back to the gym they share at Tiger Muay Thai, telling ONE Championship:

“Yeah I just congratulated him after his win, I saw him in the gym a couple of days ago. He was so impressive man. It was an impressive performance.”

Andrade will certainly try to draw inspiration from Malykhin’s historic performance as he fights for ONE gold. ‘Wonder Boy’ will return to the Circle to run back his ONE on Prime Video 3 bout with John ‘Hands of Stone’ Lineker after their initial meeting was stopped via an anticlimactic no-contest.

They’ll meet once again with the ONE bantamweight championship on the line at ONE on Prime Video 7.

---

Fabricio Andrade believes Anatoly Malykhin wants to go for a third world championship

After walking through Reinier de Ridder to capture the light heavyweight world title, Anatoly Malykhin may be considering an even bigger drop to challenge for the ONE middleweight world championship that is still held by de Ridder. Fabricio Andrade believes that may be the Russian juggernaut’s goal in 2023.

"Standing up, he [Malykhin] has too much knockout power, you know? I think now he wants to drop down to get his third belt. That’s going to be interesting."

Regularly competing in ONE’s heavyweight division, many questioned whether or not he could make the light heavyweight limit, let alone attempt to drop two weight classes and have enough gas in the tank to compete in a potential 25-minute main event. Regardless, before Malykhin can go for the ever-elusive triple-gold, he’ll likely have to settle things with the promotion’s reigning heavyweight world champion, Arjan Bhullar.

Malykhin and Bhullar have been tied for a potential showdown for the better part of a year, but with ‘Singh’ recently cleared for competition, the two could finally clash in 2023.