Joaquin Buckley spent most of fight week in Edmonton chatting with Mike Malott like a guy who’d known him for years. Then he walked onto the ceremonial weigh-in stage, put on a scowl, and refused to shake Malott’s hand. Bloody Elbow reported that he refused Dana White’s hand too. About a day later, in the main event at Rogers Arena, Malott caught him with a knee in the second round and Buckley was unconscious before he hit the canvas.
That sequence says a lot about where the value sits on a modern UFC card. Fighters who think their way through a fight are holding these events up. The staredown routine is the cheapest thing anyone sells during fight week, and Edmonton made it look even cheaper.
The act, exposed
The best detail from this whole story didn’t come from the cage. Malott told Ariel Helwani that Buckley, a talker, let something slip while they were hanging out earlier in the week.
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“He told me the whole ‘mean mug’ and ‘alpha’ thing makes him uncomfortable. He doesn’t like it,” Malott said.
So when Buckley showed up the next day glaring and leaving Malott’s hand in the air, Malott wasn’t rattled. He was reading him. “I know you’re putting on an act,” he said, describing what went through his head at the weigh-ins.
I can’t stand it when fighters won’t touch gloves, and refusing a handshake at the face-off comes from the same place. It’s aggression for the cameras, with nothing behind it. Malott saw through it right away, which makes sense once you hear how he talks about the sport.
A coach’s brain with a fighter’s knee
Malott spent a big chunk of his career coaching at Team Alpha Male, and he brought that up after the fight. “I put a lot of thought into this game,” he told reporters, including Cageside Press. He said coaching forced him to break fights down from a different angle than most fighters do. He also called himself one of the most knowledgeable fight IQ guys in the sport. That’s a big claim. He backed it up on Saturday.
The finish is worth watching slowly. Malott told Helwani he thought his kick had come up short. “Sometimes when you land a knockout shot, it feels almost like you miss,” he said. He felt his shin land on Buckley’s body, assumed he had only stopped Buckley from coming forward, and then saw him start to drop as his leg came back. Malott said that surprised him for about a quarter of a second before he galloped in for one more. He told MMA Mania, “I knew it was a wrap.”
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That’s what clean technique looks like. The shot landed so cleanly that the man who threw it barely felt it, and he followed up on instinct. Bloody Elbow already has it in the KO of the Year conversation, and I agree.
The best case for Buckley’s way, and why it falls apart
The strongest counterargument goes like this. Buckley’s personality is part of why this fight was a main event, and the handshake snub got people talking about a Fight Night in Alberta. That’s fair as far as it goes. But the snub clip lasted about a day. The knee is the clip people will keep sharing. And the most likable thing Buckley did all week came after he lost, when he dropped the act completely.
Malott told Helwani he loved Buckley’s viral post-fight video, where Buckley owned the loss with no excuses about illness or a bad camp. Malott summed it up as Buckley saying, “I own it when I win and I own it when I lose.” Malott’s response was, “How do you not like the guy?” The real Joaquin Buckley is easy to root for. The weigh-in version was the one getting in his way.
The brass noticed
White doesn’t always show up for Fight Nights, according to Bloody Elbow, but he was cageside in Edmonton with Hunter Campbell and Sean Shelby. Malott dropped to his knees after the finish, turned around, and found all three of them yelling at him. He told Full Send MMA that White told him, “That’s how you make a statement.”
At the post-fight press conference, White said, “Obviously, for Mike to be the main event here in a big fight in his home country, that’s the way you want to get it done. I mean, you couldn’t do it any better than that.”
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The numbers support him. Malott is now 15-2-1 overall and 8-1 in the UFC. He’s won five straight. Per Yahoo Sports, Buckley came in ranked No. 8, which should push Malott into the welterweight top 10 at 34 years old.
The obvious next opponent is Jack Della Maddalena. Malott said at the presser he’d be interested. The former champion has lost two in a row, but those losses came against Islam Makhachev and Carlos Prates. Belal Muhammad, who has dropped three straight, is the other name in circulation. I’d pick Della Maddalena. You find out more about a fighter’s IQ against an elite boxer than against a grinder on a slide.
During the broadcast, the UFC announced that UFC 336, its first numbered event of 2027, will be in Toronto. White said putting Malott on that card “would absolutely make sense if he’s good.” He came out of Edmonton without a scratch, so he should be on it.
