UFC Abu Dhabi's Robert Whittaker has been the hunter and the hunted. Now he's both

Yahoo

6 days ago

When Robert Whittaker broke through to win the UFC middleweight title in 2017, it was a different division than it is now. He was just 26 years old at the time, and the staples were a rogue's lineup of elder statesmen.
There were the former champions, Luke Rockhold (32), Chris Weidman (33) and Anderson Silva, though at 42 the division's GOAT was watching the sun go down. Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza (37) was still around, and Yoel Romero had just turned 40. The Cinderella of the group, Michael Bisping (38), held the title for a brief minute with one good eye. The teeth were long at 185 pounds in 2017, and Whittaker was the young gun coming for blood.
These days it's his blood they are coming for.
'I've been in the sport for a long time, and I feel that I've got a couple more years left in me,' Whittaker, now 34, told Uncrowned. 'I'm fortunate that I'm at the tail end of my career, but I'm still young enough to have had all the experience of the fights — everything kind of just accumulating into what I am now, if that makes sense. But I also see the light at the end of the tunnel.
'I'm looking forward to just that last sprint toward greatness and then spending more time with my kids.'
Whittaker fights Reiner de Ridder this Saturday in Abu Dhabi, his ninth headlining bout in the UFC. He has fought in three official title bouts, though 2018's Romero rematch would've made it four had the Cuban made weight.
Not to use the word lightly, but Whittaker has stood in there long enough to distinguish himself a warrior over the past decade. He's been through brutal wars against Romero that became instant classics, fights that showed the MMA world the depths he was willing to go. He has tamped down would-be contenders with doses of real-time reality, sending Darren Till and Marvin Vettori back to the proverbial drawing boards. We've seen him lose to Israel Adesanya twice, each time only making him more beloved in the eyes of fight fans. These days they sometimes train together.
And when Khamzat Chimaev fell out of his scheduled fight in the summer of 2024, Whittaker coldly dished out a knockout against Chimaev's stand-in, Ikram Aliskerov, with one of the fight game's favorite declarations.
There are levels.
'I'm very happy with what I've accomplished and what I've achieved in the game,' he says. 'I've climbed every mountain, experienced the highs and the lows of the game, and I've done a lot of good work towards the athletes where I live, towards the sport where I live. I think I've opened a lot of people's eyes that normally wouldn't have happened. So yeah, I'm very happy. I'm very proud of what I've done.
'And I'm not quite done yet.'
Of course, Whittaker's native Australia loves him. New Zealand loves him. His Mãori ancestors pack into his lore. He is a national treasure in that part of the world. A pro's pro, and a fighter's fighter. An inspiration to one of the most passionate MMA scenes in the world. He had a nickname for many years of "The Reaper,' which was a little too Blue Öyster Cult for refined tastes. My colleagues Ben Fowlkes and Chad Dundas rechristened him 'Bobby Knuckles' when he was holding the belt, and he has over the years warmed to the designation.
"Bobby Knuckles" has a certain ring to it.
And when "Bobby Knuckles" says he's not done yet, he means that he wants to make another run at the title — something all the aforementioned names from 2017 had in mind at this juncture of their careers. This time Whittaker, whose name still carries a lot of juice, is being billed as the hunted.
Yet in his mind it's the other way around.
'Getting that gold back — that's the ambition right now,' he says. 'To work my way back to the title, get the title, and sail off into the sunset.'
In de Ridder, he is facing a hot-rolling UFC newcomer who is 3-0 since debuting this past November against Gerald Meerschaert. Since then, in the span of eight months, "RDR" has choked out Kevin Holland and demystified Bo Nickal, the latter an eye-opening fight that launched de Ridder into Whittaker's stratosphere.
Though he is a new face in the UFC, the Dutch fighter is a former two-division champion at ONE Championship with plenty of experience.
'If you know who he is, he's done work,' Whittaker says. 'He's been two-time champion, other divisions, he's been around. He's as experienced as I am, so I need to take that with the respect that deserves going in there against another vet. He's very good at what he does, very good at his craft. It's going to be a hard fight, but I've been working diligently for it and look forward to putting on a show.'
BetMGM has Whittaker as a slight favorite for the fight, though he might've been a bigger one had the last visual not been such a tough one to take. The image of Chimaev getting Whittaker in his clutches remains. The face crank. The face turning red. The immediate tap. The X-ray with the row of displaced teeth, that alarmed so many to behold such an unnatural sight.
'I got rid of them,' Whittaker says simply of those dislodged teeth, as if any trauma was extracted at the dentist's office.
'That's over. No weakness.'
This is Whittaker in the twilight of his own career. He's been the dude who was coming for the older guys, the experienced, brand-name champions who were in his way in the mid-2010s.
Now he's in the way.
'I don't know if the middleweight division is better now, it's different,' he says. 'But this new wave of fighters, man, their skill sets are so complete. They have it all. They started jiu-jitsu from when they were young. They were doing boxing from when they were young. They've been doing it from teens, from kids. They've been training for this sport.
'And yeah, you can see the skill level of the top guys really start to stand out.'
That's what Whittaker says out loud, though in the Octagon he'll have something else to say about it.