With the UFC’s unofficial welterweight grand prix playing out across two continents over the past week, he put an exclamation mark on things in Qatar. Overcoming a longtime UFC staple with a showcase of power and skill, he turned heads from the Arabian Gulf down to the Aspire Zone, and perhaps showed the grit of a future champion to the world at large.
But maybe it’s too early to get so high on Myktybek Orolbai.
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If they chiseled him out of an ice deposit, as some have speculated, he can wait a little longer for his chance at gold.
The welterweight who everyone was really talking about — some of them through tear-inducing yawns — was Ian Machado Garry. He showed up for Saturday’s fight with former champion Belal Muhammad with big-league expectations. He promised to Uncrowned’s Ariel Helwani that he would have a big finish in Doha, which — by his own lofty boom-or-bust standards — ended up being a bust. He had to outwork and, at times, flat-out nullify the “Canelo hands” of Muhammad in taking a unanimous decision.
Would things have been a little different had the fight been scheduled for five rounds?
We’ll never know, though it had the magnitude of a fight that should’ve been given the full allotment. And really, Muhammad is a tough out. He hasn’t been finished in nine years, when a prime Vicente Luque knocked out him at Madison Square Garden. It’s easier to finish the World Famous 72-Ounce Steak Challenge in Texas than it is to finish Muhammad. With onlookers such as contender Shavkat Rakhmonov sitting cage-side in Qatar, Garry did his better work on the microphone afterward.
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“Listen, I just beat the No. 1 welterweight on the planet, Belal Muhammad, former champion,” he told Michael Bisping. “There is nobody else above him, other than the world champion Islam Makhachev. Belal couldn’t take me down, so Islam, you try to take me down. I’m tell you now, I’m the best in the world, and you have a duty to defend that belt against the best welterweight on the planet, and you’re looking at him.”
Here he pointed to his face, which was staring directly into the camera.
“It’s Ian Machado Garry. You come in my division, and you show up wherever you want in the world, and I’ll be there. And I’m taking that throne from you and I’m ending that continuous streak. You’re done. There is nobody getting in the way of me and my future and me and my dreams, so sign the contract, and I will see you soon.”
It wasn’t the fight Garry hoped for, but it should be enough to keep him in the catbird seat for a date with Makhachev. A week earlier, one of his recent conquests, Carlos Prates, scored a resounding knockout of ex-champ Leon Edwards at MSG. The fight made his own case for a title bid, yet Garry has the victory over Prates (and if you do the full fight algebra, Muhammad has the victory over Edwards).
Michael Morales knocked out Sean Brady on the same card, and Brady was already seen as worthy of a title shot, yet Morales is 26 years old and doesn’t need to be overnighted into Makhachev’s death grip. If anything, he should headline a card against a guy like Prates, a star-building exercise if there ever was one because that would be the most explosive non-title fight on record. Rarely do contenders of such warbling amplitude come together with no gold accessories in play.
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Shavkat Rakhmonov? It’s true he did beat Garry last December, but for the first time he looked mortal. It was billed as a title eliminator, yet Shavkat has been dealing with an injury for the bulk of 2025, which makes his eligibility somewhat abstract. If I’m in Shavkat’s camp, I probably want to get my feet under me with a fight against somebody other than Makhachev on return — the same Makhachev who controlled Jack Della Maddalena for more than 19 minutes at UFC 322 last week.
Any talk of Kamaru Usman leapfrogging these aforementioned contenders is of course nonsense. Usman looked great against Joaquin Buckley to snap his three-fight skid, but you know who else looked great against Joaquin Buckley? Chris Curtis. So did Alessio Di Chirico. So did Kevin Holland way back when. Not to discount Buckley’s successes (he had won six in a row when Usman stole his steam), but he’s not a gateway to a title claim.
Garry is the guy.
He handled his business all week in Qatar, holding court dressed in black traditional garb, looking very much what my colleague Ben Fowlkes called the “sleep paralysis demon.” He didn’t get the finish, but he made his case well enough. When he went backstage he got into a small (but fun) fracas with UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev, bringing a Masvidalian vibe to the proceedings.
“He’s got little d*** energy,” Garry said of the most feared champion going afterward.
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The truth is, Garry doesn’t see it that way. Khamzat is just a dude. So is Islam, the champ masquerading right now with his belt. He sees himself as the boogeyman of the ranks, and he is always ready to prove it. Not a lot of people were clamoring for a fight with Shavkat, yet Garry did it not out of fighterly duty but out of what appeared to some to be pleasure. He wanted all the smoke. When Della Maddalena and Muhammad fought in Montreal back in May, Garry weighed in as the backup fighter just two weeks after beating Prates in Kansas City.
Some people love Ian Machado Garry. Some people can’t stand him. Some hear his interviews and throw up just a little in their mouths. The Irish aren’t tuned into him as they were Conor McGregor, as our own Petesy Carroll has pointed out, and Brazil sees him as an overnight guest who is extending his stay. He has been kicked out of gyms and dragged through tabloid mud. He’s as pissy as he is nomadic. Yet he has persevered and backed up his claims at every stop that he’ll fight anybody, anywhere. He wasn’t afraid to fight Muhammad in the Middle East, and he’s open to fighting Makhachev in Dagestan if the UFC wants to do it that way (which it doesn’t).
Maybe he didn’t finish Muhammad, but Garry’s done just about everything else he said he would. The man has more than earned his shot.
