Jack Della Maddalena has been in some grueling wars in the cage, but we’ve never seen him get dominated like he did at UFC 323 against new welterweight champion Islam Makhachev. The Dagestani fighter dominated JDM
for five rounds, blanking Della Maddalena on the scorecards and controlling the fight on the ground for 19 of 25 minutes.
There’s a lot of questions surrounding JDM’s performance at Madison Square Garden. Did his team focus too much on jiu jitsu and not enough on wrestling? Should they have given him more technical advice between rounds? And how badly was he hurt by those calf kicks early in the fight? While the Australian fighter has kept his silence since the loss, his coach Ben Vickers sat down with Submission Radio to discuss the fight.
After heaping praise on Jack for his accomplishments over the years, Vickers admitted things went very wrong for them at UFC 323.
“We’re not happy with the performance. Let’s put that out there,” Vickers said. “I feel like Jack could have done better. For once in his life, maybe Jack didn’t have his best performance and put his best foot forward when it mattered, which he’s always done throughout his his whole career.”
Vickers has come under fire for his cornering in New York City, which involved a lot of emotional hype attempts without any advice to stop what Makhachev was doing to Della Maddalena round after round.
“We worked on a game plan very hard throughout the whole camp,” Vickers said of the criticism. “Technically, Jack knew what he was to do in that fight. I don’t really feel it was my role as a coach in that fight to technically guide Jack. He knew what he was supposed to do. On that day, I feel like Jack needed kicking in the ass, and I felt like that that was what my job as a coach was.”
So what was that game plan?
“I don’t wanna go too much into the game plan because it is a game plan we’ll use again,” he said. “I don’t think there was an issue with the game plan, just the execution. Definitely more movement. We wanted to do more movement. Obviously, we didn’t want to be on the ground for 19 minutes of a 25 minute fight. We wanted to do some damage.”
“I don’t think I need to to reveal the game plan or or tell anyone why it didn’t work. It just wasn’t our night, and we’re not gonna dramatically change anything. I do see the mistakes that were made, and I do see some issues that we need to fix.”
Della Maddalena took some big kicks to the calf in the early rounds that clearly hurt him badly. In the past, the gritty fighter has pushed through getting his arm broken by a kick to beat Gilbert Burns. But whatever Makhachev did to his leg seemed to take the wind completely out of his sails. Vickers didn’t reveal much more information about the condition of his fighter’s leg, but did imply it played a big part in derailing their secret game plan.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever been kicked in the calf, it’s not a very fun experience,” he said. “I think when the lead leg gets compromised early, it hurt the game plan a little bit in terms of switching and stuff like that. So I commend them on their game their their game planning against us.”
As for what’s next, Vickers just wants Della Maddalena to take some time off and relax before they get back in the gym and sort out what’s next.
“Jack’s not even home yet, so I haven’t had a proper chance to sit down with him and talk to him,” he said. “You know, straight after the fight, it’s all a bit raw. It’s not the right time to do it. But we’ll have the debrief. We’ll have the hard conversations, we’ll figure out what went wrong, and we’ll try and put it right for next time we we step back in.”
