Twelve days after Zohran Mamdani became the first Muslim ever elected as the mayor of New York City, a man named Islam became the 11th double champion in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) history. Following a defense of his lightweight championship in January, Islam Makhachev moved up from 155 pounds to 170 and defeated Jack Della Maddalena to capture the UFC welterweight title in his first match at the new weight in a dominant performance at UFC 322 on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
All three judges scored the fight 50-45. The same result as the AmNews’ unofficial card. The victory was Makhachev’s 16th in a row, tying him with MMA legend Anderson Silva for the most consecutive wins in UFC history.
In a matchup between two of the most accomplished women in MMA history, Valentina Shevchenko was victorious in defending her UFC flyweight title against Zhang Weili, who vacated her UFC strawweight belt. Overall, the event marked another successful staging for the UFC, one of the most flourishing and lucrative ventures in all of sports. The company will begin a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount in 2026 to stream its combat competitions.
The AmNews asked UFC president and CEO Dana White to reflect on the company’s time with ESPN as the two part ways after a seven-year partnership.
“I look at the path that we’ve taken to get here, we started on Spike TV, from there we went to Fox, then we went to ESPN, and now we have this Paramount deal,” he said.
“It’s almost…been the perfect trajectory and I say it all the time, I had a little bit of a rocky start with ESPN in a couple of different departments, but we ended up having an incredible relationship with them and we have a lot of respect for ESPN and all the people that work there, and I appreciate everything they did for this company over the last seven years.”
In boxing, on Saturday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, David Benavidez (30-0, 24 KOs) will defend his WBC light heavyweight title against Anthony Yarde (27-3, 24 KOs) in the main event. Also on the stacked card, Devin Haney (32-0, 15 KOs) will take on WBO welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr. (27-3, 24 KOs), WBC junior bantamweight champion Jesse Rodriguez (21-0, 14 KOs) will battle the WBA’s bantamweight title holder Fernando Martinez (18-0, 9 KOs), and British and Commonwealth lightweight title holder Sam Noakes (17-0, 15 KOs) will face Abdullah Mason (19-0, 17 KOs for the vacant WBO Lightweight Title.
The first weekend in December will see Isaac Cruz take on WBA super featherweight strap holder Lamont Roach for the interim WBC super lightweight title at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas, in the main event. In the co-main event, WBA middleweight champion Erislandy Lara will step in the ring against WBO and IBF middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly.