“CANADA HAS A TOP 10 WELTERWEIGHT 🇨🇦,” the UFC on Paramount+ account wrote on X moments after Mike Malott knocked out Joaquin Buckley in Round 2 at UFC Edmonton on Saturday night. A few hours later, Malott was already looking past the celebration.
Speaking after the fight, Malott said he wants a quick turnaround so he can compete on the UFC’s newly announced January card in Toronto, according to MiddleEasy. He also welcomed a suggested matchup with former UFC welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena and walked through the tactical choices that got him the finish.
The knockout landed with some edge to it. At the final faceoff on Friday, Buckley ignored Dana White’s handshake, a moment Championship Rounds clipped and posted on X. By Saturday, the same account was posting in all caps that Malott had slept him.
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The win moves Malott to 15-2-1, and he sits at No. 10 at welterweight in Knockout Daily’s rankings. His path here was a long one. He started training at 17 at House of Champions in Stoney Creek, Ontario, under Kru Alin Halmagean, took his first pro fight while studying at Dalhousie University in Halifax, then stepped away from MMA at the end of 2017. During that break he earned his BJJ black belt and coached striking at Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, cornering Urijah Faber and Cody Garbrandt. He came back in December 2020, won on Dana White’s Contender Series and has been building in the UFC since, with his lone UFC loss coming to Neil Magny at UFC 297 in a fight he’d been controlling before getting stopped in the third.
That makes him the kind of fighter who learned the game from the coaching side before he ever got paid to apply it, and the Buckley finish looked like it.
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Della Maddalena would be a serious step. The Australian is 18-4, held the welterweight title and is listed at No. 11 in Knockout Daily’s rankings. He last fought on May 2, so by January he’d be coming off a layoff of roughly eight months. Malott, if he gets his wish, would be turning around in about three.
No bout has been offered or announced. What Malott has made plain is the timeline he wants and the type of name he wants across from him, and a former champion against a Canadian fighting at home in Toronto is the sort of pairing matchmakers tend to notice.
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