Jack Della Maddalena calls his shot with Dana White: ‘Makhachev next in Perth, right?

The new welterweight champion wants his first title defense to be in his hometown of Perth, Australia, and he wants it against pound-for-pound No. 1 Islam Makhachev.

Ryan Harkness breaks down daily mixed martial arts (MMA) news, providing unique context to stories that only 15 years of obsessing over the sport can provide, having worked for FOX Sports, Yahoo! Sports, UPROXX, MSN, Bleacher Report, HDNet and CagePotato, among others, before joining MMAmania.com in 2017.

On Saturday night in Montreal, Jack Della Maddalena defied the odds and beat Belal Muhammad to become the first UFC champion from Perth, Australia. Now he’s looking to defend the belt in his hometown next.

Della Maddalena was just too accurate with his striking and too effective with his grappling and head movement for Muhammad, who ended up a bloody mess by the end of their five round fight (watch the highlights here). With the judges handing him the win 48-47, 48-47, and 49-46, we have a new welterweight champion ... and a potential champion vs. champion fight with lightweight title holder Islam Makhachev to look forward to.

Footage released by UFC social media accounts captured the moment Della Maddalena prompted UFC CEO Dana White over the phone to confirm a Makhachev fight in Australia.

“Makhachev next, right? In Perth?” he asked.

“We’ll get this figured out,” White replied.

There’s a lot of moving parts to Makhachev’s next fight. The lightweight champion doesn’t want to defend his 155 pound strap against former featherweight champion Ilia Topuria. He wants to fight JDM, but also doesn’t want to drop the lightweight belt to move up to welterweight. That’s a problem for the UFC, who are looking to have Topuria compete for a title at UFC 317.

UFC CBO Hunter Campbell was in Dubai and Dagestan this past week trying to sort things out. Did he? White no-showed the UFC 315 presser rather than answer endless questions about Della Maddalena, Makhachev, and Topuria. So we’ll let his non-answer be its own answer right there.

Regardless of what happens with Makhachev, Australian fans may not have to wait too long to see their new champion on home turf. Reports had the promotion planning a Fight Night for Perth in the summer, but execs are considering upgrading the visit to a full-on pay-per-view now that Della Maddalena is champion.

“I think it makes sense,” Della Maddalena said at the UFC 315 post-fight press conference of fighting Makhachev in Perth. “Obviously, Volk and Islam fought in Perth a couple years ago and that was a great fight. And yeah, people think Volk — it was a very close fight. Volk did good. So I think it makes sense. A bit of a story there.”

“Perth blew the roof off the RAC [Arena] and I think if we could do it with the hometown kid defending the belt, it would be even better.”

We’ll keep you updated as the pieces fall into place and the UFC ‘gets this figured out.’