{"id":104183,"date":"2025-08-29T12:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/104183\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T12:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:14:08","slug":"craig-jones-set-to-help-jack-della-maddalena-prepare-for-ufc-322","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/104183\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Jones set to help Jack Della Maddalena prepare for UFC 322"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s official!<\/a> Islam Makhachev will make his welterweight debut at UFC 322 in Madison Square Garden against champion Jack Della Maddalena.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fight we\u2019ve all known was coming for a while, but just didn\u2019t have confirmation on the date and location. Now that the UFC has announced it will go down on November 15th, all the fighters and coaches can finally start talking about it. Like Jack Della\u2019s head coach Ben Vickers, who spoke to Submission Radio about the bout last night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s been the worst kept secret in in MMA,\u201d Vickers said of the UFC 322 main event. \u201cKhabib [Nurmagomedov] came out a while back and and basically announced the fight for the UFC. It\u2019s nice that it\u2019s finally officially announced so we can start making official plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, we\u2019ve been training since the Belal fight for Islam, but now we can really pick up some steam and start making plans to get to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

One plan that has already been confirmed for JDM\u2019s training camp: the return<\/a> of BJJ ace and fellow Australian Craig Jones. According to Vickers, they start training with Jones in September after the second Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) goes down Aug. 30-31st.<\/p>\n

\u201cCraig\u2019s coming in,\u201d he told Submission Radio. \u201cHe\u2019s got CJI and then after that, he\u2019s gonna come to Perth for a bit and hang with us for a couple of months, and we\u2019re really gonna sharpen up the grappling side of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCraig\u2019s a better grappler than Islam is, so we have the guy there that we need,\u201d Vickers continued. \u201cIf Jack can handle Craig — which he can, because I\u2019ve watched it numerous times, and Craig says himself he picks things up from Jack. So the confidence Jack gets from having Craig, the the second best grappler in the world, self confessed, in his camp at all times and and helping. And he helped [Alexander Volkanovski] in that remarkable performance that Volk put in against Islam in their first fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re very confident in our team. Craig will be with us for a couple of months, which is awesome. Last time for Belal, we only had him for a couple of weeks. So I just think you\u2019re gonna see an evolution in Jack\u2019s game, and he\u2019s gonna look even better.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also expected Della Maddalena to get some work in with Alexander Volkanovski as well,<\/a> although the details on that were less ironed out. Just with those two involved, this fight camp is already looking pretty impressive. Islam Makhachev definitely has his work cut out for him in New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s official! Islam Makhachev will make his welterweight debut at UFC 322 in Madison Square Garden against champion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,74670,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-104183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bjj-news","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}