Jack Della Maddalena eyes Shavkat Rakhmonov as a future matchup

Jack Della Maddalena has no problem at all with being thrown in at the deep end.

The former Eternal MMA welterweight champion continued his winning start to life in the UFC last Saturday with a stunning first-round victory over Ramazan Emeev in Singapore.

Despite being the heavy betting favourite, it could be argued that Emeev presented the Australian’s toughest challenge to date on paper, with over five years more experience and 12 more fights in the pro ranks than his younger rival.

However, he quickly made short work of his more experienced opponent, stopping him with a barrage of body shots to become the first man to stop him inside the Octagon.

Speaking exclusively to GiveMeSport.com, Della Maddalena said: “Ramazan himself is a good, solid competitor, so we trained extremely hard for wrestling and grappling.

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“The goal was definitely to try and get the finish.

“I know nobody had ever finished him before, that’s what a lot of people had said, so to get the first round finish was so cool.

“He’s a good fighter like who he’s fought is pretty incredible but looking at his actual style I definitely felt from the get go that yeah this is someone who’s been in the UFC for some time but I definitely thought I could beat him.

“Not to be disrespectful but he’s not a fast-paced guy, he’s got like a slow pace, and he tries to have a slow fight.

“I felt like that’s not the way I fight, I like to make people work extremely hard, and so I thought it was a good matchup from the start to be honest.”

It’s worth nothing that De Maddalena didn’t have it all entirely his own way as he was forced to defend a tight anaconda