UFC 322 saw the crowning of one new champion with dreams of gold in a higher weight class. It also brought us some crushed dreams for another champ who bit off more than she could chew.
What really mattered from Saturday night’s event at Madison Square Garden? Here are the top five UFC 322 takeaways.
1. Turns out that Islam Makhachev’s schtick works just as well at welterweight as it did at lightweight. Takedowns. Top pressure. Short-range strikes meant to frustrate an opponent into making some critical mistake. It was all on display against Jack Della Maddalena, who had not even a hint of an answer in his first attempt at a UFC title defense.
Does this make Makhachev the world’s best in two different weight classes? Probably. Kind of. It’s true that “JDM” didn’t exactly have a chance to cement himself as the 170-pound titleholder in a way that would have made this win a true declaration of dominance. But then, that’s not Makhachev’s fault. All he’s done is show up and dominate. Again and again. Now in two different divisions. If there’s anything more you can ask of a fighter, I’m not sure what it is.
2. Zhang Weili’s ambitions died in the first round. They died when Valentina Shevchenko muscled her to the floor, flattened her out, and fed her shoulder directly into Zhang’s mouth. That’s all it took to realize the size difference would be too much for Zhang to overcome. As great as she’s been at strawweight, she had no answer for the sheer physicality of Shevchenko. This was essentially a case study in bullying.
Shevchenko was already a legend of women’s MMA before the first punch was thrown here. I’m not sure how much it adds for her to fend off a challenge from a fighter who seemed so obviously undersized in every initial exchange. But if you’re 22 years into a pro career and still so easily holding down the top spot on the biggest stage, that makes greatness a foregone conclusion. At this point it’s only a question of how great, and for how long.
3. The ghost of Leon Edwards still haunts these events, except no one is all that scared anymore. I’m not sure I can remember a sharper decline in recent years. Just last summer Edwards was the welterweight champion with back-to-back wins over a guy in the pound-for-pound conversation. Now he’s lost three straight in what feels like the blink of an eye, with Saturday’s ugly knockout loss to Carlos Prates serving as a brutal nail in the coffin.
I guess that’s life in this sport. On top of the world one day, laid out and staring at the lights the next. Still, it’s a brutal life cycle and Edwards has experienced a particularly rapid reversal of fortunes of late. He said before this fight that the best was yet to come. It might still be true, just probably not for him.
4. How is Michael Morales this good, this soon? As much as we tell ourselves that pro fighting is a young man’s game, you don’t see a ton of 26-year-olds with undefeated records knocking on the door of a title shot in MMA. Yet here he is, barely old enough to rent a car but still rocketing up the ranks. This knockout win over Sean Brady, who is himself a very good 170-pound contender, barely seemed like work for Morales. The thing about being 19-0 this early is it invites us to wonder whether you might be on the road to all-time greatness.
5. Bo Nickal is officially back on his feet. That was, of course, the whole idea behind the matchmaking here. Fresh off his first career defeat, the UFC put Nickal into the kind of fight designed to rebuild his confidence and reputation. He definitely did his part, knocking out Rodolfo Viera with a head kick in the third round.
Nickal has the kind of spotlight on him that makes it so he’ll never have a fight that flies under the radar. It is both unfair and also inevitable that each one feels like a must-win for a blue-chipper trying to prove his worth. But already we see in flashes the potential to make good on these early promises. Now he just has to prove he can pass the tough tests against experienced veterans who are brought in to do something other than lose.
