Who can stop Reinier de Ridder? What’s next for the two-division king of ONE Championship?

Reinier de Ridder is on top of the world right now. Following his lopsided victory over ONE welterweight world champion Kiamrian Abbasov at ONE: Full Circle last Friday in Singapore, ‘The Dutch Knight’ has secured a stranglehold on ONE Championship’s 205-pound weight class.

The victory pushed his professional record to 15-0, which includes a whopping 10 submissions and three knockouts. More importantly, it established him as one of the most dominant world champions in the entire promotion, in essence reigning unopposed across two weight classes.

As much as de Ridder has already accomplished in just three years in ONE Championship, there are still a few more mountains left to climb for the 31-year-old superstar.

One of his goals is to become an unprecedented three-division world champion. Accomplishing that feat would make him the only man in mixed martial arts history to hold three world title belts concurrently.

Despite the ‘Triple C’ moniker, Henry Cejudo tried to accomplish the feat in the UFC, but never got around to it. ‘The Dutch Knight’ is in the perfect position to make history.

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Reinier de Ridder wants to make history

Make no mistake, Reinier de Ridder is after ONE Championship’s heavyweight world throne and he wants it badly.

There are two ways he can pull off the impossible. He could face reigning ONE heavyweight world champion Arjan ‘Singh’ Bhullar, or he could take on ONE interim heavyweight world champion Anatoly Malykhin.

Bhullar and Malykhin are expected to unify the heavyweight belts sometime this year. However, with ONE Championship just recently resolving its contractual issues with ‘Singh', there’s no telling when the Indian star will be back in action.

Nevertheless, de Ridder, who stands at 6’4” tall, is large and lanky enough to fill the heavyweight frame and actually be a problem for that division’s fighters. In contrast, Bhullar stands at 6’1”, while Malykhin registers at a smaller 5’11”.

‘The Dutch Knight’ could end up fighting either of these men, or the winner, when the belts are eventually unified.

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Enter Vitaly Bigdash

That all falls by the wayside, though, if Vitaly Bigdash has anything to say about it.

Bigdash scored a comprehensive unanimous decision victory over former middleweight king Aung La N Sang, also at ONE: Full Circle. The victory closed the book on Bigdash’s epic trilogy with ‘The Burmese Python'.

In addition, the Russian stalwart looked phenomenal and imposed his top-heavy wrestling game almost at will.

Both de Ridder and Bigdash rely on their takedowns to bring opponents into their wheelhouse. Bigdash himself is a very dangerous grappler, just like de Ridder, so the clash of similar styles is certainly interesting.

After Bigdash’s victory over Aung La, he’s certainly the next clear-cut challenger for the middleweight throne and he can more than spoil de Ridder’s party.

For now, it’s Reinier de Ridder’s world and we’re all just living in it.