Jack Della Maddalena won’t fight on the UFC’s upcoming Sydney card. Heavy.com reported that the Australian welterweight is off the home show, and he’s taking extra time to get ready before he books his next appearance in the Octagon.
The reason is the interesting part. Bloody Elbow reported that Della Maddalena turned down the Sydney return because he’d felt like he had to take the Carlos Prates fight. That’s the full extent of what’s been reported so far, so I won’t pretend to know more about his thinking. You don’t need much more, though, if you remember how the Prates fight went. Prates knocked him out.
How he got here
Della Maddalena was the champion not long ago. He lost the 170-pound title to Islam Makhachev at UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden in November 2025. It was a five-round decision, and it was one-sided enough that no one walked out of the Garden arguing about the scorecards.
Then came Prates. The Brazilian is now ranked No. 1 at welterweight with a 24-7 record and 19 knockouts. He has stopped his last three opponents, all of them contenders, and the two most recent were Della Maddalena and former champ Leon Edwards. Getting starched by the hottest knockout artist in the division right after losing your belt is a rough stretch. Skipping a hometown fight you don’t feel ready for is the opposite of cowardice.
Where the division sits
The title picture is a mess, and Della Maddalena isn’t in it right now. Makhachev (29-1) beat Ian Machado Garry by unanimous decision at UFC 330 in August, which ran his UFC win streak to a record 17. Then he turned down a January 30 defense against Prates. He wants Prates and Michael Morales to fight first.
The UFC answered with an interim belt. Prates vs. Morales is the co-main of UFC 336 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on January 30, under Joshua Van’s flyweight title defense against Manel Kape. Morales is 19-0 and has finished Sean Brady, Gilbert Burns and Neil Magny, all in the first round. He also posted a photo of a scale reading 220 pounds, three months out from a 170-pound weigh-in. Early odds have Prates as a modest favorite.
Makhachev wrote on X that “My next fight is one of the last in my career,” and he plans to return in the second quarter of 2027, after Ramadan. Dana White has accused him of “holding up the division.”
There’s a traffic jam behind them too. No. 5 Gabriel Bonfim lost his Sean Brady fight this weekend when Brady pulled out with a staph infection. Prates says Bonfim would give him a tougher fight than Morales, but he also told Laerte Viana he’d only fight his friend “for a belt.”
Quick take
I hate interim belts, but I’ll give this mess one thing. It gives Della Maddalena some breathing room. Nobody is lining up a title shot for a guy coming off a knockout loss, so there’s no rush. He’s already admitted, through Bloody Elbow’s reporting, that he took one fight out of obligation, and it went badly. Going into a Sydney arena carrying that same feeling would have been the worst idea on the card. Let Prates and Morales settle things in Toronto on January 30. Then Della Maddalena can pick a fight he actually wants.
