{"id":6869,"date":"2026-05-07T19:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/6869\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:33:11","slug":"rankings-shakeup-carlos-prates-joins-top-5-after-ufc-perth-is-he-a-championship-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/6869\/","title":{"rendered":"Rankings Shakeup: Carlos Prates joins top 5 after UFC Perth, is he a championship threat?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Carlos Prates answered a lot of questions at UFC Perth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Could he beat another former welterweight champion fresh off of losing their title? Check. Could he do it in dominant fashion? Check. Is it time for him to get his title shot? TBD.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">One thing is for certain, support for a Prates title shot has never been higher as he has now won three straight fights, seven of eight in the UFC, and delivered a bonus-winning finish in each victory. In what has been a bounce-back campaign for the Fighting Nerds team, Prates is the hottest member of the talented team right now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Following an absolute drubbing of Jack Della Maddalena on Saturday, Prates cracks MMA Fighting\u2019s top 5 at 170 pounds, while sending Della Maddalena plummeting four spots to No. 6. It\u2019s an impressive rise for Prates and a stunning fall for \u201cJDM,\u201d who was champion just six months ago and now looks like he\u2019s far from contending for that title again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It\u2019s unlikely Prates is granted a title opportunity with champion Islam Makhachev expected to defend against Ian Machado Garry next, but the talented Brazilian remains on the list of future challengers, alongside Michael Morales and Shavkat Rakhmonov, who fans want to see put Makhachev to the test.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Check out MMA Fighting\u2019s updated 170-pound rankings below.<a href=\"https:\/\/platform.mmafighting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/109\/2026\/03\/flw.png?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Recent results for ranked fighters (previous ranking shown): No. 7 Carlos Prates def. No. 2 Jack Della Maddalena<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Upcoming bouts featuring ranked fighters: No. 7 Belal Muhammad vs. No. 15 Gabriel Bonfim (UFC Vegas 118, June 6), No. 8 Sean Brady vs. No. 11 Joaquin Buckley (UFC 328, May 9), No. 13 Yaroslav Amosov vs. Joel Alvarez (UFC 328, May 9)<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Fighters also receiving votes (number of ballot appearances shown): Jason Jackson (2), Geoff Neal (1)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Prates answered a lot of questions at UFC Perth. Could he beat another former welterweight champion fresh&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1411,335,3405,8293,8294,1412,1413],"class_list":{"0":"post-6869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-perth","8":"tag-latest-news","9":"tag-perth","10":"tag-pfl","11":"tag-pfl-news","12":"tag-rankings","13":"tag-ufc","14":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}