Jack Della Maddalena won’t stay out of the Octagon for too long.
The UFC Welterweight contender faced a ton of adversity surrounding his latest fight at UFC 299. From breaking his left arm in the first round to being two rounds down against Gilbert Burns, Della Maddalena dug deep for a third-round TKO win to take Burns’ place in the top five of the division.
Following the biggest win of his career, Della Maddalena says he actually dealt with a staph infection prior to beating Burns.
With all that said, the sidelined Australian expects his return to be sooner rather than later, perhaps like we predicted a few days ago.
“I had [arm] surgery on Tuesday,” Della Maddalena said on ‘The Grin Reapers‘ podcast (h/t: Champ RDS). “I think 12 weeks is like their full contact sort of area. I feel like I can be fit in 12 weeks as well and then probably just need a few weeks after it to get a fight. So I reckon, yeah, August.”
UFC 305 takes place on Aug. 17 (Aug. 18 locally) in JDM’s hometown of Perth, Australia. If the timeframe works out for the #5 contender, he wouldn’t mind making his wish, a title eliminator fight with Shavkat Rakhmonov, come true in a homecoming to be remembered.
“It’s a fight I’ve wanted for a while,” Della Maddalena continued. “I think the way it works out now, like obviously Leon [Edwards] and Belal [Muhammad] would fight, so then it’s sort of good timing. Me and him could fight. I like Shavkat’s style. I’ve always sort of wanted to fight Shavkat. I think he’s the best and I reckon it’s a pretty challenging fight. It could possibly be in Perth. It’d be insane. I think he would be [prepared to travel]. From what I heard he may have had an injury, but he was good to go [in] August, sort of in the same boat [as me].”
Della Maddalena (17-2, 7-0 UFC) called out the undefeated Shavkat Rakmonov in his post-fight interview at UFC 299. Rakmonov is one the most feared fighters in the welterweight division at 18-0 (6-0 UFC), but that doesn’t seem to bother the rising contender one bit.
As a ‘Plan B’, Jack Della Maddalena says he wouldn’t mind fighting a former champion in Kamaru Usman.
