Submission Radio<\/a>, Mendez was asked about comments Della Maddalena recently made about Makhachev\u2019s standup game being more simple compared to that of Belal Muhammad. Della Maddalena defeated Muhammad to win the welterweight championship at UFC 315 and he defends that title against Makhachev at UFC 322 on Nov. 15 at Madison Square Garden in New York.<\/p>\nMendez isn\u2019t bothered by Della Maddalena\u2019s appraisal, especially if the champ keeps that energy on fight night.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he\u2019s saying that, I hope that he goes in believing that because when he gets in there with Islam you\u2019re going to find out a whole different story,\u201d Mendez said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, they\u2019re completely different, and by no means is Islam easy for anybody in the standup. Any MMA fighter that\u2019s a striker is not going to have an easy time with him. I\u2019ve been with this kid going on 11 years of watching him just destroy everybody in the standup. Guys that are much better standup than him and he still destroys them.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t go by what you see. When you get in there with that man, it\u2019s a whole different ballgame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Della Maddalena has been on a tear since an uninspiring 0-2 start to his pro career. He has won 18 straight fights, 12 by knockout, including three straight first-round TKOs to begin his UFC run and a dramatic third-round finish of longtime contender Gilbert Burns.<\/p>\n
The UFC 315 main event saw Della Maddalena win a back-and-forth striking battle with Muhammad and given his impressive credentials, Mendez is treating \u201cJDM\u201d with the utmost respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis striking is very, very good,\u201d Mendez said. \u201cIt\u2019s very diverse and he\u2019s very powerful with every strike. He can hurt you with anything. He can hurt you with a kick, a knee, left hook, right hand, right uppercut, left hook, you name it. The guy\u2019s got the total arsenal to be able to put you down, so I\u2019m definitely fully aware of what he can do. Also, the longer it stands, there\u2019s always a good chance he\u2019s going to get hit, we\u2019re going to get hit. So the longer it stands, the worse it can get for somebody. At some point or another, guys like this, they\u2019re both volume, kind of precision strikers, so we just have to make sure that he doesn\u2019t land any of the bombs. And he could, it could happen because of the way he does it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not a 1-type guy. He\u2019s a 1-2-3-4 type, then re-chambers and comes back again and he\u2019ll switch his style while he\u2019s punching you. He\u2019s switching, so you\u2019re going from orthodox to southpaw back to orthodox all while striking and that\u2019s extremely impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mendez holds Della Maddalena in such high regard that he\u2019s doing something he\u2019s claimed he\u2019s never done before: watching tape of an opponent to help prepare Makhachev. In particular, Mendez is reviewing how Della Maddalena outworked Muhammad, a friend and training partner of Makhachev and his teammates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI watched it two times already, the whole fight, and I never used to so this is how much I respect him,\u201d Mendez said. \u201cHe\u2019s a legit contender. I know I have the best pound-for-pound fighter in my heart, in my eyes, but we still need to be on top in order to stay on top. We need to respect someone like Jack and give him the due respect by giving him every ounce of my energy to how good he is and what we need to do to not allow his strengths to overcome our potential weaknesses that he may expose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Della Maddalena vs. Islam Makhachev, classic striker vs. grappler matchup, right? That\u2019s not how Makhachev\u2019s coach Javier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-116490","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-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116490","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=116490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}