Joaquin Buckley spent fight week acting like a man who’d rather talk with his hands. He meets Canadian welterweight Mike Malott in Saturday’s UFC Fight Night main event at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Alberta. During the final faceoff he left Dana White’s offered handshake hanging, according to video posted by Championship Rounds on X. Happy Punch followed with a clip of White reacting to the snub, which is a sentence I never expected to type about the guy who signs the checks.
The silent treatment didn’t stop there. Championship Rounds reported that Buckley refused to answer any questions after the weigh-ins, and UFC on Paramount+ posted an interview clip in which he didn’t say a single word. Fighters go into lockdown mode all the time. Few of them do it while the boss is standing there with his hand out.
The faceoffs had a soundtrack, too. Dovy posted footage of an earlier Buckley and Malott staredown with someone in the background yelling profanities, so somebody in the building was doing the talking Buckley wasn’t.
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The form guide
This is where I live, and the gap is ugly. MMA Fighting noted that Buckley comes in on a two-fight losing streak, while Malott has won four in a row. One man is trying to stop a slide. The other is trying to keep a hot streak going in front of a Canadian crowd at 170 pounds. Yahoo Sports framed its preview around whether Malott can climb past Buckley, and that’s the right question for this card.
The event is also listed as UFC Fight Night 291. Prelims start at 5 p.m. ET (2 p.m. PT) on Paramount+, and Sherdog and MMA Fighting are both running live play-by-play and round scoring through the main card.
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The co-main is a flyweight fight with real stakes. Erin Blanchfield meets Jasmine Jasudavicius, and both women have won four of their past five, per MMA Fighting. Expect the winner to be in the mix near the top of the division. Jasudavicius, like Malott, gets to fight in front of her home country.
Quick take
I’ve lost enough money on vibes to know that a refused handshake doesn’t land punches. Still, a fighter on a two-fight skid who goes fully monastic for fight week is either very focused or very wound up, and you rarely know which until the first exchange. Malott has the momentum and the building. That’s why I’d want to see the closing number before I touch this one. If the market prices Buckley like a guy who’s forgotten how to win, he’s the live underdog I’d at least sniff at. If it prices him like a coin flip, I’ll keep my wallet shut and watch from my couch. We’ll know which version of Buckley showed up by the end of Round 1 Saturday night.
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