Islam Makhachev’s head coach has named three fights he wants the champion to complete before retirement, Sherdog reported Tuesday. That’s a big sentence to drop about a fighter who still looks like the hardest night out in the sport. The specific matchups haven’t surfaced beyond Sherdog’s headline yet, so I’m not going to pencil in names that nobody has confirmed.
What we do have is the weekend that came right before it, and that weekend was loud.
On Saturday, Championship Rounds reported that Carlos Prates will fight Michael Morales for the interim welterweight title at UFC 336 in Toronto on January 30. That interim belt exists because Makhachev wasn’t taking a January fight. Dana White didn’t sugarcoat his frustration. White said Makhachev gave no reason for skipping January beyond saying he didn’t want to fight until after Ramadan, and he added that “Islam fights like once a year.” Then came the line that tells you where the UFC’s patience sits right now: “You can’t hold up divisions like this. You gotta keep moving.”
View post on X
Prates, who isn’t known for keeping his thoughts to himself, went off on Instagram. He called Makhachev a coward and went after the idea that a fighter with Makhachev’s lifestyle needs more than three months to get ready.
“Brother, you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t go to parties, and you can’t get ready for a fight in three months?” Prates said.
View post on X
He finished with a promise. “On January 30, I’m going to knock Michael Morales out, and then I’ll come back to retire you, coward!”
Makhachev’s side of it is more procedural than personal. He said he was offered Prates, who recently lost to Ian Garry, a fighter Makhachev has already beaten. His point was that a win over Prates would only lead straight to Morales, who has been sitting and waiting for his shot anyway. “Just let them fight and we will figure out who’s the real challenger,” Makhachev said in a clip posted to Instagram. In a separate video he kept it even shorter: “Too much contenders. We have to know who is better, who deserve.”
So the champion got what he asked for. Prates and Morales settle it among themselves, and whoever leaves Toronto with the interim strap becomes the obvious name on any list of final fights his coach wants to build.
View post on X
My take: Makhachev’s logic is airtight on paper. Fighting a guy coming off a loss to someone you’ve already beaten, just to then fight the guy who was next all along, is a waste of a camp. White is also right that once a year doesn’t keep a division breathing. The good news for everyone is that the fight he dodged and the fight he wanted got merged into one, and Prates against Morales is a striking matchup I’d circle on any card. If Prates lands what he’s promising on January 30, his callout stops being Instagram noise and becomes the first name on that retirement list.
