Jack Della Maddalena walked into UFC 322 as the welterweight champion, but he walked out after four takedowns and relentless pressure. The same fighter who once shut down Belal Muhammad at every turn suddenly couldn’t stop a single shot, managing only 18 significant strikes in a five-round fight that never swung his way.
However, while fans debated what went wrong, UFC veteran Matt Brown had a razor-sharp focus on something different , the corner.
Brown didn’t mince words. On The Fighter vs. The Writer, he said Della Maddalena’s coaches spent more time yelling motivation than giving actual technical direction, and it drove him crazy to hear.
“It seemed very odd to me, like they were just trying to fire him up the whole time,” Brown said. “He’s already fighting as hard as he can. Telling him to give more isn’t changing anything. If anything, he needed to relax and adjust.”
For Brown, the issue wasn’t effort, it was strategy. Della Maddalena was already surviving every submission attempt Makhachev threw at him. What he wasn’t doing was making changes that could save his title, and Brown pointed directly at the corner for that. At one point, Brown even tweeted “terrible cornering,” letting the world know exactly how he felt.
Brown said he wanted to hear simple, effective directions like:
“Jack, sprawl your legs back when he shoots. Stay heavy on the hips. Don’t give him your base.”
He did give Craig Jones credit for trying to offer real advice between rounds, but even then, Brown didn’t think the overall game plan was built to stop Makhachev’s pressure.
“I remember the one round Craig Jones came into the octagon, gave him a little bit of actual advice,” Brown said. “I don’t remember which was which but earlier in between rounds, it was Craig Jones and later on it was whatever other coach. Craig Jones was trying to give him real advice. It would be interesting to hear Craig’s take on that or his coaches’ take.
“I’d like to hear what they have to say, not just beat a dead horse on people that can’t defend themselves. I would like to hear their opinion, their thoughts on what their corner strategy was or what they were thinking or what they were trying to say.”
Looking at the fight itself, Brown admitted he saw a mistake he once made. He said Della Maddalena seemed so focused on surviving Makhachev’s submissions that he forgot to build any offense of his own. His jiu-jitsu defense was sharp, no one can take that away, but his wrestling resistance was almost nonexistent.
“What it appeared just from the outside looking in and Jack is an amazing fighter, don’t want to take anything away from him, but what it appeared, he trained a lot to defend jiu-jitsu of Islam and survive,” Brown said. “It was amazing how he survived those submission attempts. Islam went for a few really good submission attempts and Jack was very crisp on his defense. It seemed like that was what he trained the most. Of course, we have no idea, we’re just speculating but it did not appear he trained his wrestling much because he did not give hardly any resistance at all to Islam’s wrestling.
“I’ll tell you I made a similar mistake. When I fought Demian Maia, I did the exact same thing. I trained so much to defend Demian’s rear-naked choke specifically but other things too. What happened was, I ended up with him having my back most of the fight, and I defended it most of the fight. Actually, the only reason I ended up getting caught is I went for a kamikaze escape, 30 seconds left, you already lost the fight, nothing to lose but that was really the story of the fight. It felt to me like Jack made the same mistake that I made. I focused on what my opponent was doing and how to defend their offense versus how do I get some offense myself? But particularly with Jack just defending the wrestling. I was really surprised at how easy it was for Islam a lot of the times.”
Brown compared the feeling to his own fight with Demian Maia, where he spent so much time preparing to defend the rear-naked choke that he forgot to address how to actually stop Maia from taking his back in the first place.
