On the one hand, the musical champions thing that the UFC has going on in the wake of UFC 315 is kind of fun, so long as newly crowned welterweight champ Jack Della Maddalena doesn’t get any bright ideas of going up to challenge Dricus du Plessis. For as good as Islam Makhachev’s been for the last decade, he’s still trying to distinguish himself from his coach and mentor, Khabib Nurmagomedov, his sauna soulmate who has been attached at his hip for as long as there’s been MMA coverage.
Now that Della Maddalena has taken out Belal Muhammad to win the welterweight title, it seems that Islam is moving up to do what Nurmagomedov never did.