Jack Della Maddalena’s coach, Ben Vickers, has shared his perspectives on a potential future rematch against Islam Makhachev.
Della Maddalena is gearing up for his next bout against the formidable Carlos Prates. This fight represents a crucial step for him to climb back into championship contention following his decisive loss to Islam Makhachev, which saw him lose the welterweight title in his previous outing. To earn another shot at the gold, Della Maddalena will likely need to overcome some of the toughest contenders the welterweight division has to offer.
In a recent interview, Ben Vickers offered an intriguing take on the prospect of Della Maddalena facing Makhachev again in the future.
Coach Vickers on Della Maddalena’s Future and Rematch Ambitions
“I hope Islam keeps the belt,” Vickers told Submission Radio. “One of the first things Jack said to me was that he wanted to rematch Islam for the belt. He wasn’t there hoping someone else would do his job for him and beat Islam so that he could fight them. He was very adamant in the fact that he wants to do that fight again. So for us, we would like Islam to keep winning and defending his title so that we get another crack at him.”
“I know people will think I’m an idiot for saying it, but given the way the Islam fight went, I don’t really feel like we need to change a lot, but we need to execute the game plan better,” Vickers explained. “And for whatever reason, it didn’t work out that night. But I still believe we had a decent game plan in place, we just weren’t able to set it in motion for whatever reason. Whether it was just Islam being too good on the night or Jack being slow to react to certain positions that we’d worked on. Whatever it might have been, I don’t believe there’s a great deal of work we need to do to change the outcome of the Islam fight.”