Category World News

Islam Makhachev out-classed Jack Della Maddalena in a five-round beat-down to claim a unanimous decision victory and win the UFC welterweight championship at Madison Square Garden, with Valentina Shevchenko retaining her flyweight title in the co-main event.

Makhachev made light of stepping up a weight class after relinquishing the lightweight crown to chase a new challenge, utterly dominating his Australian opponent for 25 minutes with his smothering grappling to claim his 16th UFC victory in a row on Saturday night.

The 34-year-old softened up his 29-year-old adversary with calf kicks before launching a relentless wrestling attack and Della Maddalena had no answer, getting stuck on the mat dealing with submission threats under tremendous pressure for long periods.

“This is my plan. It’s not a secret, all my opponents know this, and nobody can stop it,” Makhachev said before calling for his first title defence to be at the proposed event on the White House lawn in 2026.

All three judges scored the contest 50-45 as Makhachev became the 11th fighter in UFC history to hold titles in two different weight classes.

Della Maddalena – who ended an 18-fight career win streak, that featured 14 finishes – walked out of the cage without conducting the traditional post-fight interview and lost his first title defence since he beat Belal Muhammad via unanimous decision in May to wrest away the welterweight championship.

In the co-headliner, Zhang Weili’s dream of joining the elite group of double-champions came up short as the wily Shevchenko out-pointed her in another dominant performance to retain the flyweight crown.

Shevchenko (26-4-1) won her 11th overall title fight once she swept the scorecards 50-45 against Zhang.

Shevchenko displayed her full array of skills, sniping at her Chinese opponent and hurting her with punishing kicks to the body, and taking her to the mat and controlling her whenever she felt in danger.

The fighter from Krygyzstan became the first female UFC fighter to record 60 career takedowns – and the fight indeed ended with Zhang on her back.

“I was preparing for this fight as the hardest challenge in my life,” Shevchenko said in the cage after her customary victory dance.

“This is what I call the art of martial arts. When they are here in front of me, they cannot do anything.”

The show went on without an appearance from President Donald Trump, a close friend of UFC CEO Dana White, who normally has a cage side seat for the tri-state area’s biggest events.

UFC fans at the Garden, though, did get a big fight well ahead of the main event when a massive brawl broke out near one of the tunnels used for fight entrances and spilled through the stands and near press row.

The stir – which involved MMA fighter Dillon Danis – had the crowd howling and caused a short delay to the start of the pay-per-view card as police and security tried to bust up the melee.

Fists continued to fly at a furious pace once UFC 322 truly got under way.

Chinese Coast Guard vessels have sailed through the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands amid rising tensions between the two countries over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments about Taiwan.

The China Coast Guard said in a statement on Sunday that it “conducted patrols” around the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims as its own and refers to as the Diaoyu Islands.

“China Coast Guard vessel 1307 formation conducted patrols within the territorial waters of the Diaoyu Islands. This was a lawful patrol operation conducted by the China Coast Guard to uphold its rights and interests,” the statement said.

The deployment around the disputed islands comes as tensions rise in China over comments by the nationalist Takaichi, who suggested last week that Japan would respond militarily to a Chinese attack on the self-governed island of Taiwan.

China, which claims Taiwan as an integral part of its territory, responded angrily, with its consul general in Osaka stating that the “dirty head that sticks itself out must be cut off”.

That statement in turn prompted a formal diplomatic complaint from Tokyo.

China then summoned the Japanese ambassador and issued a travel warning on Friday advising its citizens to avoid travelling to Japan.

Three Chinese airlines said on Saturday that tickets to Japan could be refunded or changed for free.

Taiwan was once the redoubt of nationalist strongman Chiang Kai-shek, a close ally of the United States who fled to Taiwan after being defeated by communist forces on the Chinese mainland in 1949. But the island has since developed its own democratic culture and political system, and has chafed against threats of military action by Beijing.

Taiwanese authorities maintain that only the people of the island should decide their future, but Beijing has never ruled out the use of force to seize control of the territory.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, November 16:

Fighting

• The Ukrainian military said it struck Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery, located about 200km (125 miles) southeast of Moscow, as “part of efforts to reduce the enemy’s ability to launch missile and bomb strikes”.
• The Ukrainian military said the strike caused multiple explosions and a large fire at the site.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces have taken control of the village of Yablukove in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
• The Ukrainian military confirmed withdrawing from the village of Novovasylivske in Zaporizhia, saying the retreat was necessary in order to relocate to “more favourable defensive positions”.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the widow of the first victim of the 1986 disaster at the Chornobyl power plant was among several people killed in a barrage of Russian strikes on the capital of Kyiv in recent days. He said Nataliia Khodemchuk’s death was the result of “a new tragedy caused once again by the Kremlin”.
• Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported that conditions are stable at the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine after an external power line was switched off as a precautionary measure on Friday.
• The Russian state-run TASS news agency reported that Ukrainian forces have launched a drone attack on residential buildings in the Russian city of Volgograd, damaging “the facades and glazing of apartment buildings and the surrounding area”.
• The Russian Defence Ministry said it shot down eight Ukrainian drones in the course of four hours over the regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, as well as Russian-occupied Crimea, according to TASS.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russia and Ukraine have agreed to move forward with a prisoner exchange that will see the release of about 1,200 Ukrainians, according to a Ukrainian official. The announcement came after several days of talks overseen by Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates, rejuvenating an exchange process laid out during previous negotiations in Istanbul.
• President Zelenskyy promised a “reboot” of state-owned energy companies, including reforms to root out corruption, as his government continues to grapple with a major scandal in which investigators said $100m was embezzled from power firms.
• Polish President Karol Nawrocki signed a bill providing social assistance for Ukrainian refugees, but stated it was the “last time” he would do so until new solutions to the issue were found. The Polish leader has argued that the provision of assistance to Ukrainian refugees, about one million of whom are living in Poland, is “unfair to Poles”. The legal status of Ukrainian refugees in Poland is set to expire in March.
• Serbian officials said that the United States will not ease sanctions on the Serbian oil firm NIS unless it changes the company’s majority-Russian ownership share, despite pleas for leniency from Belgrade. Energy Minister Dubravka Djedovic Handanovic said that the US “clearly and unequivocally” demanded changes to Russian ownership, giving Serbia until February 13 to find a solution.

Military aid

• Zelenskyy called for additional air defence resources, following a wave of Russian strikes on Kyiv that killed at least seven people and injured dozens more. The Ukrainian leader said that the attacks underscore the need for more assistance and “greater resolve” from allies following the strikes, which struck apartment buildings across the capital city on Friday.

Thousands of protesters have marched in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, demanding justice for the 63 people who were killed in a fire at a nightclub in March.

The rally on Saturday comes ahead of the trial of the 34 people and three companies charged over the incident, which marked the deadliest blaze in North Macedonia’s history.

The fire broke out at the crowded Pulse club in the eastern town of Kocani during a hip-hop concert on March 16, triggering a stampede and killing 63 people. Some 200 others were injured.

Most of the victims were aged between 16 and 26.

Families of the victims and their supporters marched to the North Macedonian parliament on Saturday, dressed in black and carrying a huge banner with pictures of the victims, saying, “63 shadows will be following you”.

The protesters also chanted “justice for Kocani”.

The families blame corruption and greed for the deaths of their children at the unlicensed venue in Kocani. Authorities said the fire was sparked by a pyrotechnic flame that engulfed the roof of the club and that the venue had numerous and serious safety violations.

Natalija Gjorgjieska was among the families demanding justice on Saturday.

Her husband, musician Andrej Gjorgjieski, was killed in the fire. “We demand the truth. Where did the mistakes occur, who didn’t respond, which institutions were late, who had the responsibility to prevent [them] and did not?” she said.

The prosecution filed indictments for 34 people, among them the club owner, security guards and former mayors of Kocani, as well as representatives of three legal entities, including the security firm and the club owner’s companies.

They are accused of “serious crimes against public security”.

Other defendants include inspectors, civil servants and former economy ministers. If found guilty, they face up to 10 years in prison.

Corruption has long plagued North Macedonia. The Berlin-based monitor Transparency International ranked North Macedonia in 88th place globally on its Corruption Perception Index last year, one of the worst rankings in Europe.

Bribes to authorities to skip licensing requirements and skirt safety regulations are commonplace.

Conor Benn dominated Chris Eubank Jr for 12 rounds in their middleweight clash at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday to claim a unanimous decision victory, exacting revenge for his defeat in the pair’s first meeting in April.

Benn lost that fight after all three judges scored it 116-112 in favour of his opponent, but there was no doubting who won Saturday’s clash as the 29-year-old put on the most complete performance of his professional career over 36 minutes.

Similar to the first fight, Benn came out strongly in the opening rounds, coming in under his opponent’s jab to land some heavy blows, but this time, there was to be no fall-off in production as Eubank Jr struggled from the opening bell.

Eubank Jr looked to make his height and reach advantage tell midway through the third round, punishing Benn when he allowed his head to go over his front foot, but Benn’s fast footwork allowed him to get in and out without suffering too much damage.

With Benn controlling the tempo, Eubank Jr found himself forced to lock his opponent up in the clinch to avoid damage when his guard was breached.

Sensing his adversary beginning to tire, Benn stepped on the gas in the seventh round, launching savage shots to the body to slow him down even further. Eubank Jr tried to respond, but there was little malice in his usually potent jab until he finally landed some offence late in the eighth round.

That was to be as good as it got for Eubank Jr, and Benn went for broke in the final frame, knocking his opponent to the canvas twice, with the bell coming to Eubank Jr’s rescue at the end of another epic clash between the two British boxers.

Benn-Eubank feud closed

With the two boxers’ fathers engaging in a heated rivalry in the 1990s that echoed in their sons’ two 2025 clashes, Benn recorded his family’s first victory over the Eubanks and quickly drew a line under it, saying there would be no rematch.

“I feel like this is the end of the Benn-Eubank saga. Done. Finished. It’s over … this ends here,” he said, before taking a swipe at his detractors and praising Eubank Jr.

“Everyone’s saying, I can’t box? Put that in your pipe and smoke it … credit to Chris man, that’s all I say. Thank you for sharing the ring with me.”

For his part, Eubank Jr was gracious in defeat, giving no excuses for his flat performance and hailing his opponent as the better man.

“I’ve been through hell and back to get to this night, and it is what it is. I tried my best, and listen, the kid fought hard. He fought tough. He’s got power,” he said.

“Who knows, maybe we will see something new between me and him, and maybe we won’t, but for right now, it’s all about this man. It’s his night.”