{"id":273443,"date":"2025-11-09T15:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T15:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/273443\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T15:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T15:06:13","slug":"ufc-322s-jack-della-maddalena-will-be-a-defending-champion-at-170","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/273443\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 322\u2019s Jack Della Maddalena will be \u2018a defending champion\u2019 at 170"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UFC is full of champions looking to move up<\/a> as quickly as possible to snatch a second belt, but that\u2019s not Jack Della Maddalena\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

The Australian fighter won the welterweight title off Belal Muhammad<\/a> back in May and is set to defend against Islam Makhachev on November 15th at UFC 322.<\/a> While many fighters might look to keep the big champion vs. champion fights going with a move up to middleweight, Della Maddalena wants to make his mark at 170 pounds first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to be a defending champion,\u201d he told New York Post Sports.<\/a> \u201cI like to see a champion clean out a lot of the top 10 guys before moving up. I respect what Islam\u2019s done. I think he\u2019s moved up at a good time. He\u2019s done good work at lightweight. Cleaned out the division, moved up. I\u2019ll try and do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll try and defend my belt multiple times before even considering changing the division.\u201d<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean the dream of a second belt isn\u2019t there at all. Della Maddalena admitted a fight against current middleweight champ Khamzat Chimaev<\/a> intrigues him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, for sure,\u201d he said of fighting Chimaev. \u201cI\u2019ve always, I would like to fight Khamzat Chimaev at one point. If my career goes well, it\u2019d be a good challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first challenge<\/a> in front of him is Makhachev, who ruled the lightweight division for three years and five defenses before moving up to welterweight. That fight serves as the main event of the UFC\u2019s big Madison Square Garden fight next weekend, with another champion vs. champion bout<\/a> between Weili Zhang and Valentina Shevchenko serving as co-main.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UFC is full of champions looking to move up as quickly as possible to snatch a second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-273443","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-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273443","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=273443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}