Joaquin Buckley is sick and tired of the UFC welterweight division going nowhere fast.

“New Mansa” had a huge 2024 that saw him fight and win four times, which must have made his 2025 all the more disappointing. That year featured just one fight: a decision loss to Kamaru Usman in June. Since then, Buckley has been on the sidelines waiting for something to happen in the division.

Now the No. 9 ranked welterweight is throwing down the gauntlet on social media demanding fighters and matchmakers get to work because “the division is on standby.”

“Hey, look, look, look, look, look,” Buckley began. “The matchmakers know their job. They know better than me what they doing. But right now, they got the hottest division, and ain’t nobody fighting. You got Islam out there playing wrestle ball. You know? You got Prates out there partying and clubbing. You got Morales out there twerking and twirling.”

“You got JDM still at the house crying. You got Leon missing again. You got Belal trying to sell war meals. You got Ian Gary watching in the corner … And oh, yeah, Shavkat’s gone. Knocked out the ranks.”

“Boy, I don’t know what’s going on,” he continued. “Like, what’s going on with the welterweight division? We gotta get things active. Come on now. This is true. Oh, yeah. Y’all laughing. These ain’t jokes. These ain’t jokes, man. This s–t real. I’m ready to see what we capable of doing, man, 2026. Because right now, we all wasting time. Every single person that’s at the welterweight division wasting time.”

Buckley is by no means alone in his assessment of the situation. Michael “Venom” Page has been complaining about the 170 situation since arriving in the promotion, and ended up a part-time middleweight because of the lack of options at welterweight. He’s finally insisted on fighting at 170, and the best the UFC could do for his upcoming UFC London opponent was the unranked Sam Patterson.

So who would Buckley like to fight? In a follow-up video he suggested Jack Della Maddalena was the perfect opponent for him. It probably helps that Jack is ranked No. 1 at welterweight and represents the fastest jump from No. 9 to the top for Joaquin. And that’s the 170 pound division’s problem: everyone only wants the best possible fight that will put them within position to fight for the title. No one wants to fight down, and everyone wants to stay on Islam Makhachev’s schedule.

We don’t blame the fighters for this. The system is set up to encourage this kind of behavior. But at a certain point UFC brass needs to get in there and make some fights happen. Will they? We’ve been talking about this welterweight problem for the last couple of years, and so far there’s been no change. But we can hope!