{"id":289877,"date":"2025-11-17T07:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T07:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/289877\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T07:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T07:01:08","slug":"matches-to-make-after-ufc-322","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/289877\/","title":{"rendered":"Matches To Make After UFC 322"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC 322<\/a> went down last night (Sat., Nov. 15, 2025) inside Madison Square Garden in New York City, featuring a Welterweight title fight that saw Islam Makhachev dominate reigning division champion, Jack Della Maddalena, to become the latest \u201cchamp-champ<\/a>\u201d (recap<\/a>). In the co-main event, Valentina Shevchenko defeated former women\u2019s Strawweight title holder, Zhang Weili, to retain her Flyweight strap (recap here).<\/a> In addition, Carlos Prates handed Leon Edwards his third straight defeat, knocking him out in the second round with another electric finish<\/a> (highlights<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Winner: Islam Makhachev
Who He Should Face Next: Shavkat Rakhmonov (not Kamaru Usman<\/a>)<\/p>\n

I know Makhachev has his sights set on fighting Usman<\/a> in his first title defense \u2026 and I get it. After all, Usman has the \u201cname value\u201d and is the former long-time champion at 170 pounds. That said, he is just 1-3 in his last four fights, so we have to be careful when it comes to say he \u201cdeserves<\/a>\u201d the title fight. That distinction goes to Rakhmonov, who is currently undefeated (19-0), which includes going perfect (7-0) inside the Octagon. He is coming off a big win over Ian Machado Garry, which was good enough to catapult him all the way up to the No. 3<\/a> spot. When you take into consideration that Sean Brady (No. 2<\/a>) laid an egg last night<\/a>, \u201cNomad\u201d is sitting even prettier. That said, just because he should fight Rakhmonov doesn\u2019t mean he will<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Winner: Valentina Shevchenko
Who She Should Face Next: Natalia Silva<\/p>\n

Winner: Michael Morales
Who He Should Face Next: Belal vs Garry winner<\/p>\n

Morales made a big statement last night by absolutely throttling the No. 2-seeded Welterweight in the game, Brady, with relative ease in the first round, all while improving to 19-0, 7-0 UFC (highlights<\/a>). In doing so, he put himself in the championship conversation, though he will likely need one more win to get there. I wouldn\u2019t mind seeing him face off against the winner of the upcoming bout between former champion, Belal Muhammad, and the aforementioned Garry<\/a>, which is set to go down next weekend at UFC Qatar<\/a>. Either one of those fights would be intriguing because Belal is a former champion and Garry is a surging contender with title aspirations of his own. Either way, it\u2019s a win-win situation for Morales because it gets him closer to a championship fight with a victory.<\/p>\n

Winner: Carlos Prates
Who He Should Face Next: Kamaru Usman<\/p>\n

Prates also has his sights set on a title fight, but the division is getting pretty loaded at the top so he, too, will have to likely prove himself once more. And that should come against Usman, who thinks he is in line for a shot at the title<\/a>. \u201cThe Nigerian Nightmare\u201d is currently sitting in the No. 5 position, but he needs to prove himself once more before he gets thrown into the mix. If Prates can take out another former champion in Usman, then a title fight could be next, depending on how Morales does in his next fight, of course.<\/p>\n

Winner: Benoit Saint-Denis
Who He Should Face Next: Mateusz Gamrot<\/p>\n

Kicking off UFC 322\u2019s pay-per-view (PPV) main card in explosive fashion was Saint-Denis, who starched Beneil Dariush in just 16 seconds (see it again here<\/a>). That should be good enough to put him into the Top 10<\/a>, and give him bigger fights moving forward. I wouldn\u2019t mind seeing him face off against Gamrot next, who is currently sitting in the No. 8 spot at 155 pounds. Gamrot is just 1-2 in his last three UFC fights and is coming off a tough submission defeat<\/a> at the hands of Charles Oliveira (watch that here<\/a>), but there aren\u2019t a lot of top-ranked foes who make sense for Saint-Denis because they have their own paths to bigger fights lined up. This one just sounds like a lot of fun?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC 322 went down last night (Sat., Nov. 15, 2025) inside Madison Square Garden in New York City,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289878,"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-289877","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\/289877","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=289877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}