There are times when dominance can be underappreciated, especially by those who like a little drama sprinkled into their fight action. On Saturday night, Islam Makhachev didn’t go in for such theatrics in his off-Broadway welterweight title bid against Jack Della Maddalena, he went in there to render an otherwise sound champion helpless. The fight was over before it really got started.
At around the minute mark of the opening round, Makhachev shot in on Della Maddalena and dumped him onto his back in the middle of the Octagon. The crowd at Madison Square Garden, who had just watched Valentina Shevchenko keep Zhang Weili in her custody for over 13 minutes, understood the entire plot of the fight immediately. If Della Maddalena couldn’t keep the fight standing against the lineal lightweight champ, it was going to be a long night.
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And it was.
On the broadcast they called it a masterclass from Makhachev, and that’s hard to argue — he had more than 19 minutes of control time. Nineteen minutes. That kind of fight can have a soporific effect even on cities that don’t sleep, especially when the start time comes after midnight. Della Maddalena couldn’t get up, plain and simple, so he squirmed from the bottom like a man tied to a train track. His face illustrated the full range of frustrations, and his crooked nose crinkled as if longing to be smashed in more familiar ways on the feet. Long nights like that make for longer flights home, especially when your home is nearly 12,000 miles from the scene of the crime.
It was all “JDM” could do to fend off the threat of a submission to live to hear the scorecards.
The statement that Makhachev made wasn’t just that he’s the best pound-for-pound fighter going, as his belts in two weight classes might point up — it was also that he is more than a Khabib protégé. More than a super-efficient upgrade to the Dagestani machine, the so-called Khabib 2.0 model. Much more than a brilliant understudy.
Jan. 20, 2018: Islam Makhachev and Khabib Nurmagomedov have been at this together for a long time.
(Brandon Magnus via Getty Images)
What we’re seeing now from Makhachev is him surpassing the great Khabib Nurmagomedov in GOAT status, which seems impossible to some. Khabib, it might be remembered, lost only a couple of rounds in his entire UFC career, which spanned 13 fights. One of those was a round he took off to rest against Conor McGregor in the biggest pay-per-view of all time at UFC 229, a choice he made all on his own.
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The other was against Justin Gaethje, when he lost the first round on two scorecards in a fight he ended up winning via submission in the second. Otherwise, he didn’t lose rounds. Those credentials are stupid in the season of fighter parity. Nobody should be that far ahead of the curve.
Yet Makhachev, moving up a weight class, is one-upping him. He tied Anderson Silva’s mark of 16 straight wins in the UFC. Before he hit welterweight, he’d finished eight of his past nine opponents at 155 pounds. Included among those were champions like Alexander Volkanovski, Dustin Poirier and Charles Oliveira.
Now he went out and made 50-45 look entirely too easy against a guy who was standing atop the most stacked division in the UFC. Della Maddalena turned Belal Muhammad into minced meat back in Montreal, blasting him everywhere the fight went. Muhammad had an 11-fight unbeaten streak heading into that one, including a title-winning fight in which he went into Manchester, England to remove the belt from Leon Edwards’ waist. Edwards hadn’t lost in an era. The context of Makhachev’s feat is a rabbit hole in itself, and at the bottom of it the conclusion is that … well, it shouldn’t have been that easy.
The welterweight class is built of killers, those who’ve stood and those who’re coming.
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The ones who are coming were on full display in New York, too. Carlos Prates, the smoking gun, who sniped Edwards. And Michael Morales, the superstar phenom who looks like a middleweight, who took out Sean Brady. Next week Muhammad will return against Ian Machado Garry, who with a good performance could well be next in like for Makhachev. In the ether is Shavkat Rakhmonov, who many believe is destined to hold the title.
Or was destined, as these things tend to get tense in a hurry. Islam Makhachev might not officially be the champ-champ, as the UFC made him vacate the 155-pound title to pursue one in his new weight class, but we all see what he’s doing. He would be the betting favorite against any of these challenges. He now wears the familiar target he wore ruling the lightweight class that Nurmagomedov defined. But those parallels are over. He wears it at 170 pounds for a new crop of challengers to come and try to take from him. If Ilia Topuria wants to make a second leap, Makhachev isn’t going anywhere. He said he felt better in his new weight class, which is a scary thought.
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When Khabib was putting the finishing touches on his career, he was battling names like Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre in the GOAT discussion. Because he was so dominant, you could argue that he stood alone, as Silva had to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat against Chael Sonnen at UFC 117 and many believe “GSP” lost to Johny Hendricks. Khabib never really looked vulnerable.
Early on, Makhachev might’ve. He got a little run for his money in the first Volkanovski fight but dominated the rematch. He lost early in his career to Adriano Martins. That was a lifetime ago. That was back when he was another Dagestan fighter coming up. Now at 34 years old, Makhachev is off and running with 16 straight wins, with titles in two weight classes.
He’ll always be Khabib’s student, but he is no longer second to Khabib.
If Makhachev was born of da Vinci’s brush, he certainly lives by some of da Vinci’s most famous words — poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. On Saturday night, Makhachev proved he’s a lot of things, yet a poor student isn’t one of them.
