October 18, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n“I might be soft-spoken, but I’m f—–g hard-hitting,” Malott, a native of Waterdown, Ontario, said in his postfight interview.<\/p>\n
He added: “I’m on top of the world right now. This is incredible. I asked my coaches, ‘That happened for real, right? I’m not about to wake up and it’s fight morning and I just dreamt that? This is real?'”<\/p>\n
Malott and Buckley were ranked No. 13 and No. 10, respectively, in the 170-pound division coming in.<\/p>\n
Malott is now riding a five-fight winning streak, including three inside the distance. The 34-year-old improved to 7-1 in the Octagon overall. His lone loss came against Neil Magny at UFC 297 in January 2024 in Toronto.<\/p>\n
After passing the toughest test of his career with flying colors, Malott is due for another big fight.<\/p>\n
“I see a lot of dangerous guys in the top 10, but I keep fighting better and better and more dangerous guys, and my performances keep getting better. So I think that climb is just gonna continue,” Malott said. “Somebody in the top 10 at the very least, maybe top five next. Let’s go.”<\/p>\n
Buckley has dropped three in a row after back-to-back decision losses to Sean Brady and former champion Kamaru Usman over the last 16 months. The 32-year-old American suffered his first stoppage defeat since dropping down to welterweight from middleweight in 2023. Buckley hasn’t gotten his hand raised since facing Colby Covington in December 2024.<\/p>\n
Malott’s knockout capped a night full of finishes in Edmonton. The event tied August’s UFC Belgrade for the most stoppages on a card in modern UFC history (12).<\/p>\n
In the co-main event, Jasmine Jasudavicius scored an upset win over Erin Blanchfield, winning by unanimous decision in the lone fight to go the distance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mike Malott delivered a Knockout of the Year candidate in the UFC Edmonton main event. The Canadian welterweight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-932323","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\/932323","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=932323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}