It took a bit of a wait, but Ian Machado Garry is finally getting his UFC welterweight title shot. And the Irish contender will have no easy mountain to climb when he collides with pound-for-pound No. 1, Islam Makhachev, on Aug. 15 at UFC 330 in Philadelphia.
Speaking Monday on “The Ariel Helwani Show,” Garry said he’s been waiting for his title shot all year after receiving promises from the UFC. Garry, 28, last scored a dominant victory over former champion Belal Muhammad in November, extending his nearly flawless UFC record to 10-1.
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“[Makhachev] learned how to say yes,” Garry told Uncrowned. “I was told I was next in January. There were talks about April. Then there was an official offer put out May 9, to which he turned down. I threw out the ideas of International Fight Week [in July]. They said they had [that already booked]. We deserve to be main event; obviously, they had Conor [McGregor] and Max [Holloway] planned for that, which is huge.
“It was, ‘No, no, no.’ They spoke to me about how they needed to do their due diligence and put on one of the biggest fights they possibly could, which was Ilia [Topuria] vs. Islam at the White House. Islam turned it down, to my knowledge, from what I’ve been told. And here we are. The right fight has been made. The fight that should be fought. And we get it on Aug. 15, my friend.”
Garry has been a notably active competitor throughout his UFC run. At minimum, “The Future” has made sure to get at least two fights in per year since arriving to the promotion in late 2021. Considering the heights he’s reached as a top 170-pound contender, that made his time on the sidelines all the more unbearable.
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To ease or distract his mind, Garry noted how he’s taken up gardening, tending to his outdoor space daily just to maintain his sanity. Ultimately, Garry admitted the wait was made tougher because his trust isn’t always firm in UFC to make the proper matchups.
“I’m at the highest point in my career right now,” Garry said. “I just beat a former champion in Belal Muhammad to earn and cement myself as the No. 1 contender. The champion essentially has one fight a year, and can apparently just say no whenever he wants until he’s ready. To me, that’s not the baddest man in the world. To me, that’s not the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.
“Obviously, I’m not an irrational human. I understand there’s life things that happen, but ‘no, no, no, no,’ with no reasonable or sensible excuse isn’t right. It’s tough on the mind. It’s infuriating. I’ve been told since January, ‘I’m next, I’m next, I’m next.’ You’ve got people online, other contenders, trying to state their claim, but they were told they weren’t, so they’re just lying to fans. It’s tough. It’s not easy.
“I want to earn that world title,” Garry continued. “I want to fight Islam. I want to beat the best in the world to prove I’m the best. I’m training, I’m training, I’m training, staying fit, doing everything I possibly can. I’m eating the right foods, I’m doing all the right things, but then it’s just getting extended and prolonged.”
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From a stylistic perspective, parallels have already started to be drawn between Garry’s upcoming bout and the 2018 blood feud between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor. Ireland’s Garry and Dagestan’s Makhachev represent the same nations as McGregor and Nurmagomedov before them, respectively, while providing a striker-versus-grappler matchup at its core. Yet, unlike the rollercoaster ride that was Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor, there’s no real animosity between UFC 330’s main players.
Garry simply wants to prove he’s better — and in doing so, vault himself to the top of the conversation as the sport’s top dog.
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“He’s absolutely cemented himself as the best fighter on the planet right now, and until he’s beaten, he holds that status,” Garry said of Makhachev. “To be the best, you have to beat the best. There is nobody else I would want to beat to prove that I’m a champion of the world. There is nobody else I’m more excited to fight and test myself against than this dominance in Islam Makhachev. He’s earned that title as the pound-for-pound No. 1 on the planet right now.
“That’s the guy I want to take out to make sure it’s undeniable when I beat him, I’m the best welterweight on the planet and arguably the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.”
While Garry respects his future Hall of Fame opponent, Makhachev has already hurled preemptive verbal jabs of sorts. In a recent interview, Makhachev predicted the Irish challenger is going to spend the entire fight at UFC 330 trying to avoid him. Makhachev pointed out Garry’s aversion to getting hit, while Garry responded by highlighting that it’s more about his opponents’ inability to connect with their strikes.
Garry issued a calculated and confident response, calling back to Makhachev’s lone career loss: A first-round knockout against Adriano Martins in 2015.
Ian Machado Garry defeated former champion Belal Muhammad in November.
(NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“You’ve not seen me sparked unconscious in the UFC. You’ve seen Islam sparked unconscious in the UFC. [Neither of us] has been dominated in this sport. You’ve seen [our hands] get raised, time and time again,” Garry said.
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“The truth is, I have this feeling in my heart that they know I’m the trickiest opponent for him. That’s why he’s calling out [Carlos] Prates. That’s why he’s calling out [Michael] Morales. That’s why the champion of the world, one of the most dominant athletes we’ve ever seen, called out Kamaru Usman to defend his world title against. Does that make sense?
“He knows I’m long, I’m tall, I’m fast, I’m rangy,” Garry continued. “I understand distance management and control. If you want to flip that into a terrible wording, you’ll say what he said. But if you want to talk about it from an elite standpoint, I get hit very rarely. It’s never clean, it’s never connected. I’m always just out, and the people don’t have their success. I’m tricky on the feet, I’m tricky on the ground. I’m hard to touch, hard to control, I’m hard to predict what I’m going to do. I’m hard to read. All of those are elite stand-up and grappling skills.
“So, from my point of view, there is nobody in this division that is a trickier matchup for Islam Makhachev. I’m 6-foot-3, I’m long, I’m tall, I’m beautiful. I know how to use my hands, my feet. … I stopped 15 of 17 takedowns from Shavkat [Rakhmonov] and Belal Muhammad. I know what I’m doing in this sport. Four people in this sport since I made my UFC debut have double-digit wins, and me and Islam are two of the four. This is right fight — the fight that has to happen.”
Regarding technical ability at welterweight, Garry has blossomed into one of the best the division has to offer. But with that have also come questions of the danger Garry presents due to his lack of finishes — only three of his 10 UFC wins have ended early.
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The question then becomes: Is Makhachev underestimating Garry, and does the champ respect his next challenger as a fighter?
By the end of UFC 330, Garry promises Makhachev most certainly will.
“If he doesn’t right now, he will when I finish the fight with him. If he doesn’t respect me, then he’s in for the shock of his life on Aug. 15,” Garry said.
“Genuinely, right now, it’s by any means necessary, my hand gets raised. It could be by first-round knockout, fifth-round knockout, submission; it could be a dog-and-dog back-and-forth war. As long as my hand gets raised, I have succeeded in achieving everything I wanted to achieve in this sport, and I do it against one of the best fighters this generation has seen.”
