Islam Makhachev is no longer the UFC’s lightweight champion after he opted to vacate the title in order to pursue a fight with newly crowned welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena.
Makhachev had teased the possibility of this outcome prior to Saturday night’s UFC 315 event, revealing that if his training partner Belal Muhammad lost his welterweight title to Maddalena then he would move up to challenge him in a bid to become a two-division champion.
At that stage Makhachev appeared to be under the impression that he’d be able to retain his current title if he did move up to contest the 170lb belt, but it seems the UFC hasn’t allowed that as he’ll now have to leave the title behind, just as Ilia Topuria had to do recently with the featherweight belt when he moved up to lightweight.
And speaking of Topuria, with a title fight against Makhachev now ruled out, he’ll instead go on to fight Charles Oliveira for the vacant 155lb title at UFC 317 in Las Vegas on June 28th.
As for Makhachev vs. Maddalena, no fight date has been announced for that yet, but the new champion had already signalled his willingness to fight him after beating Muhammad by unanimous decision at the weekend and appeared to be open to returning to the Octagon sooner rather than later.
The 28-year-old Maddalena is currently 8-0 in the UFC and has also beaten the likes of Gilbert Burns and Kevin Holland en-route to his title win this past weekend in Montreal.
As for Makhachev, he currently tops the UFC’s pound-for-pound list after amassing a 15-fight winning streak, including four successful defenses of the lightweight title, defeating the likes of Alexander Volkanovski (x2), Charles Oliveira, Dustin Poirier and Renato Moicano along the way.
