{"id":288220,"date":"2025-11-16T12:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T12:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/288220\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T12:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T12:17:07","slug":"biggest-winners-loser-from-ufc-322","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/288220\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggest Winners, Loser From UFC 322"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC 322 blew the roof off Madison Square Garden last night (Sat., Nov. 15, 2025) in New York City, which featured a Welterweight title fight that saw Islam Makhachev dominate Jack Della Madallena to become the new king at 170 pounds (recap<\/a>). In the co-main event, Valentina Shevchenko put on a masterclass performance against former women\u2019s Strawweight title holder, Zhang Weili, to retain her strap (recap here). <\/a><\/p>\n

Biggest Winner: Islam Makhachev<\/p>\n

Makhachev took Madallena\u2019s belt and he made it look easy, too. From the jump, Makhachev made it known that it was going to be a fight fought on the ground, taking \u201cJDM\u201d down and keeping him there for the majority of the first five minutes. And that was the story of the fight, as Makhachev did whatever he wanted to do to Madallena once he got a hold of him, slamming him to the mat and the punishing while putting his entire body weight on him. Once it was all said and done, Makhachev had earned a clear-cut unanimous decision to win his second title in as man divisions. In doing so, Makhachev raised his stock even further and could overtake Ilia Topuria for the top spot in the pound-for-pound list<\/a>. And once again the Dagestan-born fighter showed why he is one of the most dominant, dangerous and feared fighters in the game today.<\/p>\n

Runner (s) Up: Carlos Prates and Michael Morales<\/p>\n

The new age of the Welterweights officially arrived last night after both Prates and Morales put on blistering performances against two established veterans. Up first was Prates, who blasted former 170-pound champion, Leon Edwards, into another dimension with a devastating right hand that sent him crashing to the canvas only to receive a finishing blow that put him out for the count (highlights<\/a>). With the win, Prates should be hitting the Top 5 after defeating the No. 4 ranked fighter<\/a> in the division. And when you couple that with Sean Brady\u2019s defeat at the hands of Michael Morales, he is sitting pretty when it comes to title fight consideration. Speaking of Morales, he will be getting some love here, too, after he throttled Brady in the very first round thanks to his precise striking that had his foe puzzled from the jump. After Morales put Brady away rather violently (see it here<\/a>), he will also take a huge jump the Welterweight ladder.<\/p>\n

Honorable Mention: Bo Nickal<\/p>\n

We have to give Bo some love here because he heard it all following his one0sided loss at the hands of Reinier de Ridder, so you know it felt so good for him to get back into the win column in such impressive fashion by knocking out Rodolfo Vieira by head kick knockout in the third and final round (see it again here<\/a>). So he may have been a bit justified to give flipping off the crowd after they went from booing him to cheering him. With all that pressure on him to perform to justify the love and hype he gets from UFC, Nickal can, and should, celebrate his bounce back win any way he wants.<\/p>\n

Biggest Loser: Leon Edwards<\/p>\n

\u201cRocky\u2019s\u201d stock continues to crumble. Indeed, the former UFC Welterweight champion of the world, who at one point was unbeaten for seven years and on 13-fight unbeaten streak, which included two wins over Kamaru Usman (both title fights), has now lost three in a row. His most recent defeat at the hands of Prates, however, was perhaps his most stunning and violent after he was knocked out cold by the \u201cThe Nightmare\u201d in round two (highlights<\/a>). As a result of his streak he will definitely get bounced from the Top 5 and those hopes of ever fighting for another UFC world title have drifted further away. Another loss will be disastrous for his career, so he has to go into his next outing with even more pressure to perform and win. First things first, however, he needs to figure out where it\u2019s all gone wrong before he decides to return to action.<\/p>\n

For complete UFC 322 results, coverage, and highlights click HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC 322 blew the roof off Madison Square Garden last night (Sat., Nov. 15, 2025) in New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,162126,40762,785,139415,85,162125,1396,6656],"class_list":{"0":"post-288220","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-jack-della-vs-islam-start-time","12":"tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","13":"tag-mma","14":"tag-preview-and-live-results","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc-322-fight-card","17":"tag-ufc-news","18":"tag-ufc-results"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288220","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=288220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}