Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

A dominant victory over a late replacement, a subsequent 10-month layoff and breakthrough victories from contemporaries Ilia Topuria and Merab Dvalishvili were the only things of late holding former lightweight champion Islam Makhachev back from keeping the top spot in the pound-for-pound rankings over the past year.

All of that changed, however, at UFC 322 in November when Makhachev moved up to welterweight to decisively commandeer the 170-pound title from Jack Della Maddalena to become the 11th two-division champion in promotional history.

The 34-year-old Makhachev, who also equaled Anderson Silva's UFC record for consecutive wins with 16, appeared slightly reborn at the new weight after recently saying that years of hard weight cuts down to

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