Jack
Della Maddalena made certain the world would remember his
name.
The Dana White’s Contender Series graduate laid claim to the
undisputed
Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight crown with a
five-round unanimous decision over Belal
Muhammad in the
UFC 315 headliner on Saturday at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
Della Maddalena (18-2, 8-0 UFC) carried all three scorecards—48-47,
48-47 and 49-46—to his 18th consecutive victory.
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Muhammad (24-4, 15-4 UFC) chose to stand with the Australian
kickboxer for three rounds, foregoing the wrestling-centric
approach that made him a champion. Della Maddalena capitalized,
called upon kicks to all levels and cut loose with multi-punch
combinations to the body and head. Muhammad picked up his pace and
appeared to turn a corner in the fourth round, which gave way to an
epic fifth. A close-range knee strike from Della Maddalena opened a
cut underneath his counterpart’s left eye. Muhammad answered with a
takedown and some ground-and-pound before upping his aggression in
the standup once the challenger escaped to his feet. Violent
exchanges ensued. Della Maddalena found another gear, let fly with
crisp accurate punches and had the Chicago native reeling, but he
did not have enough in the tank to procure the finish.
Meanwhile, Valentina
Shevchenko waded through considerable difficulty to retain her
undisputed women’s flyweight championship with a grimy unanimous
decision over Manon
Fiorot in the five-round co-main event. All three cageside
judges scored it 48-47 for Shevchenko (25-4-1, 14-3-1 UFC).
Fiorot (12-2, 7-1 UFC) entered the cage on the strength of a
12-fight winning streak and held her own despite appearing to
suffer a broken nose in the first round. She took down Shevchenko
in the second and engaged her in the clinch repeatedly across a
tactical 25-minute affair. Fiorot scored with knees to the body and
elbows on the break, all while racking up considerable control time
in close quarters. Shevchenko countered effectively throughout,
mixed in a few spinning attacks and sat down the off-balance
challenger when she doubled up on right hands late in the fourth
round. With the outcome still in doubt, they dueled one another in
the clinch for much of the fifth round—neither woman gained a
discernible advantage—and left their fate to the scorecards.
The defeat was Fiorot’s first since in nearly seven years.
Further down the card, Tristar Gym rep Aiemann
Zahabi outlasted former UFC and World Extreme Cagefighting
champion Jose Aldo to a
unanimous decision in their three-round featherweight showcase.
Zahabi (13-2, 7-2 UFC) swept the scorecards with 29-28 marks across
the board and turned away mixed martial arts royalty in the
process.
Aldo (32-10, 14-9 UFC) was strong out of the gate. He tore into the
Canadian with brutal body shots, occasional leg kicks and
multi-punch bursts to the head. Zahabi absorbed all the punishment
and kept his foot on the accelerator with almost zombie-like
persistence. Aldo wobbled him with a right hand in the third round,
followed with a knee and then blasted him with a head kick as he
returned to his feet. The Brazilian emptied his gas tank in his bid
to finish, but Zahabi refused to cooperate and somehow weathered
the storm. He bounced back late in the round, battered an exhausted
Aldo in the clinch and forced him to retreat to his back after a
failed takedown attempt. From there, Zahabi assaulted the Nova
Uniao cornerstone with elbows that resulted in a cut to the
forehead and significant swelling under the left eye. Aldo
withstood the onslaught, but the decision was lost.
The 37-year-old Zahabi has won six fights in a row.
Elsewhere, burgeoning Team Borracha star Natalia
Silva made her most significant move yet with a comprehensive
unanimous decision over Alexa
Grasso in their three-round women’s flyweight attraction. All
three cageside judges scored it the same: 30-27 for Silva (19-5-1,
7-0 UFC), who has rattled off 13 straight victories.
It was an exercise in frustration for Grasso (16-5-1, 8-5-1 UFC).
Silva circled incessantly on the outside, bounded in with
rapid-fire punches, showed a willingness to exchange when the
situation required it and piled up points and damage with kicks to
all levels. Her work resulted in multiple hematomas on Grasso’s
face, and she opened a cut near the Lobo Gym standout’s left eye
with a well-placed head kick in the third round.
Grasso, 31, has lost back-to-back bouts for the first time in her
career.
Finally, ex-French paratrooper Benoit St.
Denis rebounded from consecutive losses to Dustin
Poirier and Renato
Carneiro, as he dismissed Kyle
Prepolec with an arm-triangle choke in the second round of
their lightweight appetizer. A short-notice fill-in for Joel
Alvarez, Prepolec (18-9, 0-3 UFC) raised the white flag 2:35
into Round 2.
St. Denis (14-3, 6-3 UFC) overwhelmed the former Samourai MMA
champion with pace and aggression. He set the tone with a takedown
inside the first 30 seconds of the first round, advanced to the
back, threatened the neck with a rear-naked choke and applied his
ground-and-pound. Prepolec survived but only prolonged the
inevitable. St. Denis pinned him to the fence in the middle stanza,
unleashed a hellacious barrage of elbows and bullied him back to
the mat. From there, he framed the arm-triangle choke, cleared the
guard and let his squeeze do the rest.
The loss snapped a three-fight winning streak for Prepolec.
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