On May 10 in Montreal, a new welterweight champion was crowned after Jack Della Maddalena continued his win streak.
Della Maddalena defeated Belal Muhammad over five rounds at UFC 315 with the scorecards all being in his favor.
That didn’t stop some from making a case for the champion deserving the victory, which Della Maddalena fired back at on social media.
Many fans believed that the challenger was in clear control of the fight but the judges saw it differently with the fight coming down to the fifth round on two of the cards.
This result even prompted Jon Anik to suggest open scoring which might have made both men change their approaches in the final stages after realizing how close the contest was.
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Jack Della Maddalena’s coach says he believed they were cruising to a victory before the scorecards were revealed
Following his fighter’s title win, Jack Della Maddalena’s coach Ben Vickers ended up going viral for the advice that he gave to the challenger before the fifth round.
His expletive-filled speech to ‘JDM’ was essentially him saying to keep pushing but don’t take any unnecessary risks.
Vickers used very different words but the core idea of the message was to keep picking away at Belal Muhammad, like they had been doing for four rounds, to see the fight out.
Vickers spoke about the reaction to this clip in a recent interview with Submission Radio where he stated that he gave this advice to Della Maddalena because he believed that there was no way they could lose the fight at that point unless they were finished.
“Well, I was actually convinced Jack was 4-0 up, honestly. So it could’ve gone horribly wrong. I really, having watched the fight back on a few occasions, I’m really baffled by the scoring. I thought we were cruising. I mean I thought he may have lost the fourth, it was a close round.
Fortunately, the challenger won the fifth round but things could have been very different if Della Maddalena had taken his foot off the gas under the assumption that the belt had already been secured.
“I’m normally a pessimistic corner man but I was convinced that he was cruising and all he had to do was not get stopped and we know Belal couldn’t stop a bus at a bus stop. So, I just didn’t want him to do anything stupid because I know he loves a finish.
“As it turns out, it was 2-2 going into the last. I don’t think Jack needed any encouragement but the fact that he got it was probably a good thing.”
The most important moment of Jack Della Maddalena vs Belal Muhammad came in the fifth round
With everything to play for in the fifth and final round, Belal Muhammad could have retained the welterweight title following one significant sequence.
The champion secured one of his three takedowns 90 seconds into the round and he immediately started to go to work with plenty of Octagon space to play with.
Just over a minute later, Della Maddalena was able to push Muhammad off him and get back to his feet where he won the remainder of the round with his striking.
Had ‘Remember the Name’ been able to control ‘JDM’ on the ground for the majority of the fifth round, the entire aftermath of UFC 315 could’ve changed.