One self-taught team's plan to take down the greatest MMA lineage with 'no credentials' - ESPN

NEW YORK — Ben Vickers has to be, by his own admission, one of the least-qualified trainers to be involved in a UFC title fight at Madison Square Garden.

Vickers is the head coach of Scrappy MMA in Perth, Australia, home of UFC welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena (18-2), who will make his first defense at UFC 322 on Saturday (10 p.m. ET on ESPN PPV, prelims at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN+). Across the cage from Della Maddalena will be former lightweight champion Islam Makhachev (27-1) — and the championship lineage he represents.

Makhachev is ESPN's second-ranked pound-for-pound fighter in the world. His coaches are Khabib Nurmagomedov — the only UFC champion to retire undefeated — and American Kickboxing Academy founder Javier Mendez, who has trained more than half a dozen MMA champions since the 1990s, including Nurmagomedov and fellow UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier. According to the online database Tapology, Della Maddalena's head coach has a professional MMA fighting record of 0-2.

«I have no credentials, none,» Vickers told ESPN. «I have no fight career to fall back on. I'm not a lifelong martial artist. I believe I deserve to be here, but I don't know how I got here.»

Vickers is being modest, but nevertheless, his coaching experience at the highest level is limited to Della Maddalena's UFC career, which began in 2022. Scrappy MMA's other trainers include Della Maddalena's longtime teammate Ryan Gray and Della Maddalena's older brother, Josh, who are essentially his fighting peers, with less than 20 combined appearances between them. It's a homegrown team that has little-to-no martial arts background, with the members borrowing techniques from seminars and tinkering with their own.

While Makhachev's corner and its