Ben Vickers, the coach of Jack Della Maddalena, believes Islam Makhachev will be an easier fight than Belal Muhammad was.<\/p>\n
Della Maddalena is set to defend his welterweight title<\/a> for the first time when he takes on Makhachev. Della Maddalena is coming off a decision win over Muhammad earlier this year to become the welterweight champion.<\/p>\n Ahead of his title defense against Makhachev at UFC 322, he is a sizable betting underdog. Yet, Vickers doesn\u2019t understand why, as he believes Muhammad was a tougher fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI like the matchup, I really do,\u201d Vickers told Southern Cross Combat <\/a>(via MMAFighting<\/a>). \u201cI think it might actually be a bit easier than the Belal fight, just given the styles and that. Belal\u2019s a bit more unorthodox, so a bit harder to cope with whereas Islam\u2019s a more traditional sort of striker. Obviously, a slightly smaller guy and I don\u2019t doubt that he\u2019s going to put the weight on.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s two ways it could go. Does not having to cut weight help him or does carrying that extra weight hinder his cardio? We don\u2019t know how that\u2019s going to play out yet. He\u2019s obviously never fought at \u201870 as a competitive fighter, I don\u2019t think, so it\u2019s going to be his first time stepping up a weight class, in a title fight, doing five rounds with the champ. It\u2019s a tough ask for Islam and I understand that his body of work and the way that he\u2019s sort of dispatched with everyone of late makes him the favorite, but I really think Jack\u2019s going to have a good time in this fight.\u201d<\/p>\n Islam Makhachev is not on Jack Della Maddalena\u2019s \u2018striking level\u2019<\/p>\n Although Ben Vickers does believe Islam Makhachev poses a lot of threats with his grappling, he\u2019s confident Jack Della Maddalena will be able to keep it standing.<\/p>\n But the other big reason why he\u2019s so confident is due to the fact that he believes Della Maddalena is a level above Makhachev on the feet.<\/p>\n \u201c(Makhachev is) a good striker, but I feel like he\u2019s a learning striker,\u201d Vickers said. \u201cI feel like he\u2019s not as fluent as his grappling is. I feel like it\u2019s not his preferred thing, and I feel like he doesn\u2019t have extreme comfort there just yet. He\u2019s definitely a good striker, but he\u2019s definitely not on Jack\u2019s level when it comes to striking.\u201d<\/p>\n Della Maddalena vs. Makhachev is set to headline UFC 322 on Nov. 15 from Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Vickers, the coach of Jack Della Maddalena, believes Islam Makhachev will be an easier fight than Belal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-231572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231572","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=231572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}