Joaquin Buckley hasn’t made peace with 2025. The welterweight told CBS Sports he’s still bothered by being passed over for a title shot that year, and he’s sticking to his read on the matchup he never got. The outlet’s headline sums up his position: “I had the tools to give Islam Makhachev real problems.”
That’s a heavy thing to carry into a main event, and Buckley is carrying it into one this weekend. He faces Mike Malott atop UFC Edmonton on Saturday, the promotion’s return to Canada, and the timing of the complaint is interesting. Grievances usually get aired from the top of a win streak. Buckley is airing his from the bottom of a skid.
How He Got Here
The case for Buckley as a contender was built in December 2024, when he beat Colby Covington in the main event of UFC Tampa. That win put him in the title conversation, which is the snub he’s still chewing on. Then the momentum went sideways. He dropped a decision to Kamaru Usman, then another to Sean Brady at UFC 328 at the Prudential Center in Newark on May 9, 2026. Two fights, two losses, both on the cards.
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Makhachev, meanwhile, has moved on to other business. Volkanovski referred to him as the former lightweight champion in a separate interview this week, and Justin Gaethje now holds that belt after finishing Ilia Topuria at UFC White House in June. As for Makhachev’s next fight, Championship Rounds posted on X that a Makhachev vs. Carlos Prates matchup is being discussed for UFC 336 on January 30 in Toronto, citing reporter Kevin Olmenero. Nothing official there yet, so file it under talk for now. Jean Silva has already told MMA Fighting that once Prates lands his hand, the fight is over, which tells you how the Fighting Nerds camp feels about it.
The Malott Problem
Buckley, now 32, doesn’t get a soft landing. Malott has won four straight, including wins over Kevin Holland and the since-retired Gilbert Burns at UFC Winnipeg in April. He’s the hotter fighter in this booking, and he gets to do it in front of a Canadian crowd.
Buckley has spent fight week loosening up in public. He launched a Kick streaming channel only days ago and told MMA Fighting that watching Quinton Jackson and King Green build their channels convinced him he could do it too. He also admitted he sat on fan footage he shot back in 2023 because he didn’t trust himself back then. He says that’s changed. At the faceoff, per a clip posted on X by Dovy, somebody in the background was yelling profanities the whole time, which is about as Canadian a welcome as you can get.
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I’ll give Buckley this much. Fighters who think they got skipped usually do one of two things, and sulking on a podcast is the less productive one. The trouble is the math. A guy coming off two straight decision losses doesn’t get to argue hypotheticals against the best fighter of his generation, because the matchmakers already have fresh evidence and it isn’t flattering. Malott is riding four wins in a row and Buckley is riding zero. If Buckley wants anyone to take the Makhachev talk seriously again, the only argument that counts happens Saturday night in Edmonton, and it had better not go to the judges.
