Jack Della Maddalena’s face told the story in the UFC 322 main event.
“JDM” entered Saturday’s pay-per-view show at Madison Square Garden in New York with dreams of defending his welterweight belt against Islam Makhachev, one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the world, but left on the wrong end of a disappointing shutout loss as Makhachev controlled him with wrestling for 25 minutes.
Heading into the championship rounds, Della Maddalena couldn’t hide his frustration and disappointment, and former champion Kamaru Usman thinks he knows right when Della Maddalena knew the cause was lost.
“You see that face that JDM had right there?” Usman said on his Pound 4 Pound podcast. “There’s that face while he’s trying to—you see that face. … There’s that face right when Islam gets that double. … There’s that face of, ‘I’m trying to fight, but this dude can’t freaking let me.’ That right there is when you start to [makes breaking motion].”
Della Maddalena made it to the bell, but his performance was disappointing, especially considering how he won the belt this past May when he earned a gutsy decision win over Belal Muhammad at UFC 315. There were few opportunities for Della Maddalena to show off his exciting striking here as he spent the majority of his bout on his back defending against Makhachev’s attempt to pass his guard.
Since Della Maddalena managed to keep his fight with Muhammad standing, there was a chance he could force Makhachev to engage him in similar fashion if he could stop takedowns. But Makhachev was relentless and Usman believes he has a strong chance to retain his title against the current crop of contenders.
“I knew there was two directions that it was going to go,” Usman said. “I just didn’t think this fight was going to be a long back-and-forth fight like myself and [Colby Covington] 1. I just knew that wasn’t going to be the case for this. I thought either JDM somehow really has closed those gaps from the holes that he has to where he’s able to step forward and start to do damage or Islam was going to do what I thought he was going to do. That’s get him down, and when you get some of these guys down, we’re able to float on these guys, we’re able to just kind of be a step ahead of them in them trying to maneuver and create a scramble to get back to their feet, and that’s what Islam did.
“I mean, come on. Nineteen minutes of control time. The only other time I’ve seen that long right now in that welterweight division with these top guys, I would say my fight vs. [Joaquin] Buckley. Basically, this is how you stifle some of these new guys. I feel like there’s a lot of—not a lot—but there’s a JDM, there’s a few JDMs in the welterweight division. Carlos Prates. [Michael] Morales, we haven’t seen these guys go down to the ground. There’s a few guys like that that are tough, gritty, heavy, hard-hitting strikers. But there is a way to potentially neutralize that striking and Islam did just that.”
Usman’s co-host Henry Cejudo believes Makhachev could have finished him and if the two ever fight again, Makhachev will definitely push to end the fight inside the distance.
However, Usman isn’t so sure Della Maddalena can be put away so easily, even given how Saturday’s fight went.
“I give [Della Maddalena] credit,” Usman said. “There’s a crop of guys now in this division that are just fearless, that don’t care, they’re willing to throw the kitchen sink and their dogs at you in order to potentially get you out of there with that one shot and JDM is one of those guys to where I think you can bend them, big time, I haven’t seen him break. Because when they break, they make mistakes like turning, giving up their back so they can get out of the fight. … So I don’t want to just shit on him and say, ‘Oh yeah, he broke.’”
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