Top UFC welterweight contender Jack Della Maddalena has just been promoted to BJJ black belt by Ben Vickers, the head coach of Scrappy MMA and Fitness. The promotion has come immediately after Maddalena managed to register the biggest win of his professional MMA career to date and break into the top 5 of his division. He’s been an active MMA fighter for around 8 years now and although Maddalena is known more as a talented striker with vicious knockout power, he’s developed some great grappling to go along with those skills.
Maddalena was originally a rugby player before taking up boxing, which was his first taste of combat sports and the start of his journey into MMA. He transitioned from boxing to MMA and started his professional career with Eternal MMA in 2016, although he was finished in both of his first two fights. Maddalena bounced back and continued fighting on the regional MMA circuit in Australia, improving his record to 3-2 before traveling to England for his first fight abroad with Cage Warriors. After another win there he challenged for the Eternal MMA title and not only won it but successfully defended it on 4 occasions too.
With a 9-2 record and every win coming by way of finish, Maddalena was given the chance to compete on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2021. Although that was the first decision win of his career, he was still given a UFC contract and he made his promotional debut just a few months later at the start of 2022. Maddalena has been on an incredible run since then, winning 6 fights in a row with 4 finishes to shoot up the rankings and earn a fight against long-time welterweight top contender Gilbert Burns.
That was the biggest challenge of Maddalena’s career so far for a number of reasons. Not only is Gilbert Burns the biggest name that he had faced up to this point, but he is also one of the best grapplers in the history of MMA. Burns threw everything he had at Maddalena over the course of their fight but in the end, Maddalena got a wild comeback win by knockout in the final round and passed the test with flying colors. It was an incredibly impressive performance that could be signs of a bright future for Jack Della Maddalena and it’s no surprise that he was promoted to black belt after keeping up with an elite BJJ competitor like Burns on the ground.
Scrappy MMA and Fitness shared the news that Jack Della Maddalena was promoted to BJJ black belt in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
