Outside Source
Bo Nickal admits that his first MMA setback forced him to re-examine his approach. | 📷: Getty/UFC
The critics were always within earshot, and their cries only grew louder when hardship struck. A four-time NCAA All-American wrestler and three-time national champion at Penn State University, Bo Nickal started his professional mixed martial arts career with seven consecutive victories, six of them finishes. Shares in his stock were at peak valuation.
Then Reinier de Ridder happened.
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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.”
Nickal, a married 29-year-old father of two, scoffs at the idea that his loss to de Ridder was somehow a byproduct of his supposed lack of devotion to MMA or that burnout had set in after more than two decades of hand-to-hand competition.
“It’s the biggest passion that I have in my life,” he said. “It’s something that I’m just so excited to do. I’m really grateful that I get to make a career out of this and go in every day and train. I was thinking the other day that it’s really interesting because I’m basically doing the exact same thing right now that I was doing [as a wrestler] at 5, 6 years old. I just don’t go to school. Other than that, I’m pretty much in the same routine that I’ve always been in, and I enjoy it. It’s really fun for me. Every day, my favorite part, other than hanging out with my wife and kids, is being able to go train and go to practice. That’s what I love doing.”
Nevertheless, Nickal admits that his first professional setback forced him to reassess his position and re-examine his approach. The American Top Team rep looked inward and put his trust in those closest to him.
“I think, for me, it felt like a lot of changes because I really just changed a lot of stuff mentally and had a different level of focus and intensity and motivation with my training,” Nickal said. “I think that the loss has been something that’s been really good for me and something that I’m grateful for. The hard part is [that] now it’s felt like a long time [since the fight], and I’ve been waiting and just working and grinding.”
Vieira, 36, presents challenges all his own. One of the most accomplished grapplers to ever cross over to MMA, the Fusion X-Cel product was a multi-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion and a gold medalist at the 2015 Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Fighting World Championships. Vieira arrived in the UFC in 2019 and carries a respectable 6-3 record across his nine appearances in the organization. He has Nickal’s full, unadulterated attention.
“Rodolfo is world-class, not only in one sport but in two sports, which is impressive,” he said. “It’s something [where] you’ve got to respect the guy going in, and I think that, for me, it’s really a lesson that I learned my last fight—to focus more on myself than my opponent and just work on continuing to round out and perfect my skills and the fundamentals of fighting. I’ve got respect for Rodolfo. He’s [been] able to accomplish a lot, but this camp and all the training leading up [to this fight] has been focused on me.
“He’s a really nice guy,” Nickal said. “Obviously, he’s a true student of the sport. He’s a guy that’s competed in combat sports for a long time, so I think respect is something that’s really important. It’s more emphasized in jiu-jitsu and wrestling and grappling sports over MMA.”
Nickal relishes the chance to show his wares at Madison Square Garden, one of the most iconic settings in sports and a historic venue where the spotlight always seems to shine brightest.
“I think this is an opportunity for me to prove to myself what I’m about,” he said. “Really, the platform I’m given is such a blessing, and I feel really grateful to have that to try to share a positive message—a message that promotes faith, that promotes family and the things that are important in life. As far as what people think of me, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not really super important. What is important is that I compete to the best of my ability, as hard as I can, [and] have my effort at 100%.
“I just feel like, right now, the platform that I’m given, it’s just to promote how important my faith is to me, how important my family and friends are to me and those relationships,” Nickal added. “Really, those are the most important things in my life. Outside of that, fighting is super important, but it’s just something that I do and that I get to pursue.”
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
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