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This collage of photos shows English MMA fighter Paddy Pimblett (left) and Islam Makhachev. \u2014 X\/Reuters\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paddy Pimblett has called Islam Makhachev \u2018one of the best\u2019 in the sport after UFC 322 victory over Jack Della Maddalena.<\/p>\n
The Dagestani fighter vacated his lightweight title earlier this year to move up and chase gold at welterweight as well.<\/p>\n
Makhachev successfully defeated Della Maddalena by unanimous decision, 50-45, 50-45, 50-45, to become a two-division champion, on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York.<\/p>\n
The dominant performance of Islam was praised by many, including lightweight contender Paddy Pimblett, who gave his opinion on the bout on his YouTube channel.<\/p>\n
The Liverpool fighter lauded Makhachev as one of the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cPound for pound No. 1, lad. Unbelievable performance,\u201d Pimblett said. \u201cI think he goes down as one of the best ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paddy then talked about Ilia Topuria\u2019s callout, saying there are several others in line for Islam, and the Spanish fighter might not get his chance in the near future.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe mentioned the White House, but I think he\u2019ll defend his belt before the White House. The White House isn\u2019t until July, is it? Let\u2019s see what happens. You never know,\u201d Paddy added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIlia\u2019s been saying he wants to go up and fight him, but you\u2019ve got other contenders there now. [Michael] Morales, [Carlos] Prates, you\u2019ve then got Ian Garry if he beats Belal [Muhammad] next week. Shavkat [Rakhmonov] as well, who needs to come back. He\u2019s been the No. 1 contender for about a year. They\u2019re all exciting matchups for Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
The English fighter then explained how Islam Makhachev\u2019s win could affect the lightweight division.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe welterweight division, at the moment, could be becoming more exciting than the lightweight division. I don\u2019t think any division has been more exciting than lightweight in over 10 years. Good times for the sport,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This collage of photos shows English MMA fighter Paddy Pimblett (left) and Islam Makhachev. \u2014 X\/Reuters\u00a0 Paddy Pimblett…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,75314,786,27140,27141,38928,785,17498,1641,85,787],"class_list":{"0":"post-290687","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-della-maddalena","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-islam-makhachev","13":"tag-jack-della-maddalena","14":"tag-makhachev","15":"tag-mma","16":"tag-paddy-pimblett","17":"tag-pimblett","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-ufc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290687","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=290687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}