Mike Malott put Joaquin Buckley to sleep with a knee in the second round of the UFC Edmonton main event on Saturday. The first faces he saw afterward belonged to the three people who sign his checks.
The Canadian welterweight told Full Send MMA that he dropped to his knees after the finish, turned around and found Dana White, Hunter Campbell and Sean Shelby cageside, all yelling and fired up. White’s message, according to Malott, was that’s how you make a statement. Malott said he walked back over to thank them for the opportunity.
White being in the building at all was a small story of its own. The UFC boss has made a habit of skipping Fight Night cards, but he was parked cageside with Campbell and the rest of the brass at Rogers Arena.
“At the end of the day, those are the most important people to impress as far as this sport’s concerned. So I’m happy they enjoyed it,” Malott told reporters, including Cageside Press, after the fight.
The handshake that wasn’t
The finish landed on top of a prickly fight week. At the ceremonial weigh-in face-off a day before the bout, Buckley refused to shake hands with Malott or White, which Bloody Elbow noted seemed to light a fire under the Canadian. One night later Buckley was out cold, and Bloody Elbow is already calling it a Knockout of the Year contender.
Malott, now 15-2-1, kept his own review short. “I’m pretty happy with that one. I wouldn’t change that.”
He also leaned on the years he spent coaching at Team Alpha Male, saying the job forced him to study fights differently than most of the guys across the cage from him. “I put a lot of thought into this game. I was a coach for a long time, so I had to dissect it from a different perspective than a lot of fighters,” he said.
What White said, and what’s next
At the post-fight press conference, White sounded like a man who’d just watched his matchmaking pay off in front of a home crowd.
“Obviously, for Mike to be the main event here, in a big fight in his home country, that’s the way you wanna get it done, he couldn’t have done it any better than that,” White said.
During the broadcast, the UFC announced that UFC 336, its first numbered card of 2027, will land in Toronto. Malott walked out of Edmonton without a scratch, and the 34-year-old fits that card like a glove. White wouldn’t commit to anything but didn’t shut the door either, saying a spot on the Toronto show “would absolutely make sense if he’s good.”
Former champion Jack Della Maddalena has been floated as a possible next opponent, per Bloody Elbow. The Australian is on a two-fight skid.
My take: book it for Toronto and don’t overthink it. A former champ who needs a win badly against a hometown guy coming off a highlight knee is the kind of fight that sells itself in Canada, and Della Maddalena is a far more serious test than any easy name they could hand Malott to keep the momentum rolling. If Malott wants to keep impressing the guys in the front row, beating a man who has held the belt is how he does it.
