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Then Reinier de Ridder happened.
A former two-division ONE Championship titleholder, de Ridder bullied and ultimately stopped the previously unbeaten Nickal with a volley of knee strikes in the second round of their UFC on ESPN 67 clash on May 3. Detractors reveled in his misfortune, all while he tried to put some of the pieces back together. Difficult questions were asked about the level of Nickal’s dedication to his craft and whether he had allowed newfound fame to pull him in too many different directions.
“I think any time there’s criticism, you can take it personally and let it be a hit to your ego, or you can look at it and analyze it and try to be unbiased,” Nickal said at UFC 322 media day. “I feel like [with] a lot of stuff, there’s some truth to it, so you can maybe look at it from that way or perceive it that way and [say], ‘Maybe there’s a little truth there.’ But I feel like it’s lacking the whole picture. At the end of the day, I’m going to live my life the way I want to live my life. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do or how to do it. I’m going to make those decisions and do what I think is best for me personally.
“That being said, I don’t really approach the critics and observation of what they’re saying with malice,” he added. “To be 100% honest, most of it I don’t even hear, so I’m not really super worried about it.”
Nickal returns to the Ultimate Fighting Championship pressure cooker when he locks horns with decorated Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Rodolfo Vieira in the featured UFC 322 prelim on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York. By then, nearly 200 days will have passed since his ill-fated encounter with de Ridder.
“I definitely wanted to get back in [the cage] sooner, but things work out the way they do,” Nickal said. “There’s a lot of other moving parts other than myself and what I want, so I’m grateful to be on this card. It’s definitely one of the biggest cards of the year and, in my opinion, probably the best card of the year as far as matchups. It’s a great opportunity for me.”
READ HERE
Bo Nickal: How First MMA Setback Shaped Recalibration for Return at UFC 322
The four-time NCAA All-American will attempt to rebound from his first professional defeat when he locks horns with Rodolfo Vieira in the featured UFC 322 prelim on Saturday in New York.
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