Islam Makhachev not taking UFC welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena lightly.

Standing in Makhachev’s pursuit of a second UFC belt is Della Maddalena (18-2 MMA, 8-0 UFC), who outstruck Belal Muhammad to claim the welterweight title at UFC 315 last month. Makhachev (27-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC) acknowledges the Aussie has shown vast improvements in his game.

“It’s going to be a hard fight. Honestly, it’s going to be,” Makhachev told MMA Junkie. “I saw his fight against Belal. He’s good, man. When he began fighting in the UFC, he had problems with wrestling, but now he’s improved because I’ve seen him training a lot with wrestlers and grapplers, and that’s why he’s champion right now. He’s good everywhere. But we will see who’s the best fighter in the world very soon.”

Makhachev was surprised to see Della Maddalena dethrone Muhammad, who he’s trained with before on numerous occasions. He was also confused by Muhammad’s game plan.

“It was crazy,” Makhachev said. “I know Belal well. I was training with him many times, and I know his skills. I was surprised how he fought. I was surprised by his fight plan. I think he did mistakes. He had the option, but he didn’t use (it). He started to wrestle in the last round, maybe.

“You have to wrestle from the first round if you have plan to wrestle because you can make him tired – you’re not sweating. I saw: Maddalena has improved a lot because he has really good boxing, and he knows everybody is going to try to take him down, and now he has good defense.”

Many viewed Makhachev as a big lightweight, but the move up to welterweight hasn’t been as seamless as expected.

“I will try to be big, but it’s not easy,” Makhachev said. “All my life, I’ve been cutting weight, but now when I want to be big, my weight stays in the same position. I try to lift more. We do some program and slowly, slowly we bring maybe two kilograms now. It’s very hard, but I don’t want to be big by eating and not training. I want to be with muscles. I want to train, do right lifting program, and bring some muscles.”

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Islam Makhachev: Jack Della Maddalena is ‘going to be a hard fight’