Della Maddalena didn’t come up through the usual feeder system. He grew up in Perth, came into the world with cleft lip and palate complications that required emergency surgery as a newborn, and, as his older brother Josh told Fox Sports, was “born hard, and always fighting.” He built his career at Scrappy MMA under head coach Ben Vickers, a trainer who told ESPN he has “no credentials, none,” and whose own pro MMA record is 0-2. Della Maddalena debuted in the UFC in 2022 and ran off seven straight wins to earn a title shot.
The style is boxing first. Tight combinations, slips off the centerline, 5.32 significant strikes per minute at 55.96% accuracy. He wants the fight standing. His takedown accuracy sits at 20%, and his takedown defense is the obvious hole at championship level — grapplers who can hold pressure across five rounds find the gaps. Against anyone willing to trade with him, he’s one of the most dangerous finishers at 170.
The defining run came between 2022 and 2025. He stopped Danny Roberts inside a round on debut, submitted Randy Brown at UFC 284, took split decisions over Bassil Hafez and Kevin Holland, then knocked out Gilbert Burns in the third round at UFC 299. That earned him a shot at Belal Muhammad at UFC 315 in Montreal in May 2025, where he took the welterweight title by unanimous decision. His first defense came against Makhachev at UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden — a venue he’d named as a bucket-list arena in a Newsweek interview before the fight. He lost a one-sided unanimous decision, then dropped his next bout to Carlos Prates by third-round TKO in May 2026.
Where he stands now: former champion, two-fight skid, still ranked at welterweight but no longer the man at the top of the division. Speaking to UFC.com ahead of his Perth return, he was blunt about the Makhachev loss — “I lost to the better man,” and the skill level needs to come up. The question I keep coming back to is whether a homegrown team with no championship pedigree can rebuild a fighter whose ceiling, for a while, looked like the highest in the weight class.