Belal Muhammad and the UFC were forced to pick from a relatively tight pool of opponents for his first title defence.
The welterweight champion dethroned Leon Edwards last summer at UFC 304 in Manchester, and was due to make his first defence against Shavkat Rakhmonov this May. Unfortunately, the unbeaten contender was forced out with injury after leaving a slew of rivals in his wake.
Major names such as Ian Machado Garry and Kamaru Usman were ruled out on the basis of having lost their last fights. As a result, the promotion were forced to reshuffle Edwards’ UFC London headliner and give the undefeated Jack Della Maddalena his shot at a world title.
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Belal Muhammad explains how UFC 315 headliner decision was made
After it emerged that Rakhmonov wouldn’t be available to fight on the May 10 date for UFC 315, Belal Muhammad faced a tough test in naming a replacement opponent. The welterweight champion will have been out for almost a year, and needed to get a title defence in on the planned showcase.
As such, a number of big names were touted, and eventually the promotion landed on Jack Della Maddalena. Speaking on his iteration of the Anik and Florian podcast ‘Remember The Show’, he detailed how the process went down.
“We had the date for May 10,” he explained. “And then they told me Shavkat was hurt and it was like ‘who’s it going to be?’ So for myself I’m looking at like the names on the list.
“And you’re looking at like Kamaru is number two but he’s on a three-fight losing streak and his knees are probably like 80-years-old. So I doubted they were going to give it to him so then I start looking at maybe [Sean] Brady.
“I already beat Brady, I already beat Leon [Edwards] so then I looked at Jack and he had the highest win streak. I was like ‘bro, I want to beat another guy’s streak, right?’ We got Brady when he was 15-0, we beat Leon who was on a 12/13 fight win streak, so Jack’s got the longest now let’s go.
“I’m a guy where I don’t care who it is in front of me, but they were just throwing out the names and then they were like ‘Shavkat is hurt’. You’re wondering who it’s going to be and they discuss it with you but at the end of the day it’s going to be whatever they choose.”
Joaquin Buckley was named as other option for UFC 315 main event
Prior to Maddalena getting the shot, another name that might have earned his way to a chance at the belt was Joaquin Buckley. In the great shakeup around UFC 310 when Muhammad was injured, he lost out on a chance to fight Ian Machado Garry, but did end up demolishing and stopping Colby Covington.
Now, he is a legitimate contender with a win over a former interim champion. But he hasn’t quite accrued to win streak of the Australian, and was forced to wait out just a little longer for his shot at the world title.
“At first I was wondering would it be someone coming off a loss,” Muhammad told Jon Anik after he suggested both Buckley and Garry as potential names who are missing out. “The big names you’re looking at with Shavkat out are Ian Garry, he’d be next but coming off a loss.
“Then it’s Kamaru; loss, Colby; loss. Okay so then who has the longest streak? Jack, but I’m looking at his date end of March and I doubt he would have been able to turn around and you don’t want to take a chance on him losing that fight because then it’s back to Leon and I just dominated Leon.
“For the UFC it made the most sense because he’s got the longest streak and he’s from Australia, they’re trying to build up that region over there. [Buckley] I think was a guy that was talked about but at the end of the day it just came down to who had the most wins at 170lb and that was Jack.”