Mike Malott is officially in the welterweight Top 10, and he got there the fun way. The Canadian knocked out Joaquin Buckley in the UFC Edmonton main event last weekend, and MMA Mania’s updated Meta Rankings, published Tuesday, moved him up three spots to No. 8 at 170 pounds.
It’s the fifth straight win for “Proper” and his second consecutive knockout. MMA Mania described the result bluntly: Malott destroyed Buckley atop the card in front of a Canadian crowd. That’s about as good a hometown-country weekend as a fighter can have.
The other side of the ledger is rough. Buckley has now lost three in a row, and he slid four spots to No. 12. A guy who was knocking on the contender door not long ago now finds himself sandwiched between Kamaru Usman at No. 11 and Yaroslav Amosov at No. 13.
Here’s how the welterweight neighborhood looks around Malott now. Islam Makhachev holds the belt. Carlos Prates sits at No. 1, followed by Ian Machado Garry, Michael Morales, Jack Della Maddalena, Sean Brady, Gabriel Bonfim and, at No. 7, former champ Belal Muhammad. Directly below Malott are Uros Medic at No. 9 and Leon Edwards at No. 10. So the Canadian is now ranked ahead of two former UFC welterweight champions in Edwards and Usman, which is a sentence nobody would have bet on a couple of years ago.
For longer-memory fans, Malott’s finishing run has been building for a while. He also knocked out Charles Radtke at UFC 315 at the Bell Centre in Montreal on May 10, 2025, so Canadian crowds have gotten used to watching him leave opponents horizontal.
Edmonton moved other names too. Jasmine Jasudavicius upset top-ranked Erin Blanchfield and jumped three spots to No. 3 at women’s flyweight, while Blanchfield dropped two places to No. 5. At women’s bantamweight, Chelsea Chandler submitted Melissa Croden on the prelims and leapt six spots to No. 9. Croden fell six spots to No. 15. All told, a big night for the Canadian-hosted card’s winners and a brutal one for the favorites.
The charts get shaken again next week. UFC 333, headlined by Alexander Volkanovski vs. Movsar Evloev, goes down Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, with the featherweight rankings expected to take the biggest hit.
My take: Malott did what I want every ranked climber to do. He took a name fight, headlined at home and finished it. No coasting to a 30-27, no vague press-conference mush about taking whoever the UFC hands him. Now the matchmakers have an easy call sitting right above him. Belal Muhammad at No. 7 is a grappling puzzle that would tell us whether Malott’s hands hold up when someone drags him to the mat for 15 minutes, and Medic at No. 9 is a slugfest that sells itself. I’d book Muhammad. If Malott beats a former champ, he gets to start talking about Makhachev with a straight face.
