{"id":293246,"date":"2025-11-19T12:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/293246\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T12:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T12:36:11","slug":"ufc-322-islam-makhachev-goes-top-of-mens-pound-for-pound-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/293246\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 322: Islam Makhachev goes top of men’s pound-for-pound rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Islam Makhachev has returned to the top of the UFC’s pound-for-pound men’s rankings after beating Jack Della Maddalena to win the welterweight title.<\/p>\n

Russia’s Makhachev dominated on his way to a unanimous decision victory<\/a> at UFC 322 in New York last week as he became only the 11th two-division champion in the promotion’s history.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old has replaced lightweight champion Ilia Topuria – the belt which Makhachev held before vacating it in June – at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n

In the women’s pound-for-pound rankings, Kyrgyzstan’s Valentina Shevchenko remains top following her flyweight title defence against China’s Zhang Weili.<\/p>\n

Weili, who vacated her strawweight belt in October to challenge Shevchenko, has fallen to third behind bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison.<\/p>\n

In the welterweight rankings, Britain’s former champion Leon Edwards has dropped down five places to ninth after being knocked out by Carlos Prates.<\/p>\n

The defeat was Edwards’ third in a row and leaves the 34-year-old well outside the top title contenders in the division.<\/p>\n

The biggest riser was Ecuador’s Michael Morales, who stopped American Sean Brady in the first round to move up to third in the welterweight rankings.<\/p>\n

Morales will be keeping an eye on Ireland’s Ian Machado Garry, who is sixth, and second-ranked Belal Muhammad, who fight in Qatar on Saturday in a bout which could determine the next title contender for Makhachev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islam Makhachev has returned to the top of the UFC’s pound-for-pound men’s rankings after beating Jack Della Maddalena…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-293246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}