Mike Malott needed 7:32 of cage time to turn the UFC Edmonton main event into a highlight he’ll be watching for years. At 2:32 of Round 2 inside Rogers Place on Oct. 17, Joaquin Buckley dipped in behind a left hand and met Malott’s right knee on the jaw. His mouthpiece left the building, he folded with his legs splayed, Malott added one punch, and referee Marc Goddard stepped in. It was Malott’s fifth straight win and, per Yahoo Sports, his seventh straight fight on Canadian soil.
The finish looked sudden. The fight leading up to it explains a lot of it.
Round 1 belonged to patience
Yahoo Sports described Buckley, a slight underdog coming in, as composed in boxing range and countering many of Malott’s high kicks cleanly. Henry Cejudo saw it from the other side, posting on X that Malott was fighting intelligently and using his kicks to take the first. TSN’s Aaron Bronsteter had it 10-9 Malott after what he called a competitive round. My read is that both are right, and that’s the kind of round judges should score on effective striking rather than crowd noise. Malott’s kicks gave him the volume and the visible damage. Buckley’s counters were the sharper individual punches.
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Belal Muhammad, watching from home, posted that Buckley is better when he isn’t being patient and that he needed to get wild. That’s a fair diagnosis of Buckley’s best version. The problem is that a Buckley who gets wild against a disciplined kicker is a Buckley who starts closing distance with his head low, and that’s exactly what happened next.
Round 2 and the setup
Buckley came out of the corner throwing. Per Essentially Sports, he landed a shot at one point that briefly rocked Malott, which is the closest Buckley came to turning the fight. Malott’s answer was smart and unglamorous. He tied Buckley up, pinned him on the fence and went to the body with knees.
Here’s my read on why that clinch sequence mattered. Between the body kicks in Round 1 and the knees on the fence in Round 2, Malott spent the whole fight telling Buckley that his offense lived at the midsection. When they broke back to the center, Athlon’s account has Buckley coming forward and dipping low on a straight left. Essentially Sports adds that Malott caught him with a counter right before the knee. Ducking under a head kick is a reasonable instinct. Ducking toward a man whose favorite target is your stomach puts your chin exactly where his knee is headed.
MMA Junkie and Heavy both noted that the strike first looked like a body kick. Buckley’s own forward momentum shortened the distance, and a roundhouse aimed at the ribs became a knee to the face. The follow-up punch, per Heavy, put him completely out.
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About the fluke talk
Athlon rounded up the forums afterward, including a Sherdog poster who wrote, “Mike absolutely was throwing a body kick. Still an awesome finish. But be honest people, you know that was a fluke.”
I’ll be honest. It wasn’t. Malott started training at 17 at House of Champions in Stoney Creek, Ontario, under Kru Alin Halmagean, and later coached striking at Team Alpha Male. Anybody with that kind of kickboxing background knows a kick thrown at a closing opponent collapses into a knee, and the fighter who keeps turning the hip through still lands something hard. The skill sits in throwing it at the moment the opponent commits forward, and Malott threw it right as Buckley loaded up the left. Fans immediately compared it to Marlon Moraes’s knee on Aljamain Sterling, which is the right comparison. Kenny Florian summed it up on X with “Shin to chin to tuck you in.”
The other thing the fluke crowd misses is that Malott is a BJJ black belt who once dominated Neil Magny on the ground before getting stopped in Round 3 at UFC 297. He has a complete game. He chose to keep this one standing and win it with timing.
What it means at 170
Malott is now 15-2-1 and 8-1 in the UFC. He came in ranked No. 13 on the Meta rankings, according to Yahoo, and every outlet covering the fight expects him in the top 10 next. Michael Carroll’s numbers on X make the case cleanly: since 2022, only Ian Machado Garry (nine) has more UFC welterweight wins than Malott’s eight, which ties Jack Della Maddalena. Malott’s six finishes in that span tie Uros Medic and trail only Carlos Prates (seven). This came after he stopped Gilbert Burns in Round 3 in Winnipeg in April, and he banked another $100,000 Performance of the Night here.
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Malott refused to call anyone out, as usual, but told Paul Felder, “Somebody in the top 10 at the very least, maybe top five next, baby, let’s go.” One matches-to-make column floated Muhammad (24-6, 1 NC), who is coming off losses to Gabriel Bonfim, Garry and Della Maddalena. I’d book it. If Malott brings those clinch knees against a wrestler who has to get inside, I like his chances.
For Buckley, it’s three straight losses after decisions against Kamaru Usman and Sean Brady, and Athlon noted it’s his first knockout loss in nearly four years. This is the same fighter who strung together six straight wins before the skid, including stoppages of Stephen Thompson and Colby Covington, so the talent hasn’t gone anywhere. The fight-week act did him no favors, though. He ignored Dana White’s handshake at the ceremonial weigh-ins, stayed silent through a UFC interview and, per Heavy, refused to touch gloves. White joked at the post-fight press conference that he told Hunter Campbell to cut him, then made clear he was kidding and added, “I have no problem with Joaquin Buckley.” There is no indication he’s going anywhere.
Malott’s next chance at a home crowd is already on the calendar. UFC 336 is set for Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Jan. 30.
