But maybe it’s too early to get so high on Myktybek Orolbai.
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If he was pulled from an ice deposit, as some have speculated, he may wait a little longer for his chance at gold.
The welterweight they all were In fact The one he was talking about (some of them through heartbreaking yawns) was Ian Machado Garry. He showed up for Saturday’s fight against former champion Belal Muhammad with big-league expectations. He promised Uncrowned’s Ariel Helwani a big finish in Doha, which – by his lofty boom-or-bust standards – ended up being a bust. He had to work harder and, at times, outright override Muhammad’s “Canelo hands” by making a unanimous decision.
Would things have been a little different if the fight had been scheduled for five rounds?
We will never know, although it was the magnitude of a fight that should have been given full allocation. And really, Muhammad is a difficult way out. He hasn’t finished for nine years, when an excellent Vicente Luque knocked him out 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 spectators like contender Shavkat Rakhmonov sitting cageside in Qatar, Garry did his best work on the microphone afterwards.
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“Listen, I just beat the number one welterweight on the planet, Belal Muhammad, former champion,” he told Michael Bisping. “There’s no one else above him other than world champion Islam Makhachev. Belal couldn’t take me down, so Islam, try to take me down. I’m telling 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 looking directly into the camera.
“I’m Ian Machado Garry. You come to my division and show up wherever you want in the world, and I’ll be there. And I’ll take that throne from you and put an end to that continuous streak. You’re done. There’s no one to stand in my way and my future and my dreams, so sign the contract and I’ll see you soon.”
It wasn’t the fight Garry expected, 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 over former champion León Edwards at MSG. The fight gave him a chance to fight for the title, but Garry has the win over Prates (and if you do the full algebra of the fight, Muhammad has the win over Edwards).
Michael Morales knocked out Sean Brady on the same card, and Brady was already seen as worthy of a title shot, however, Morales is 26 years old and doesn’t need to spend the night under Makhachev’s deadly clutches. If anything, he should headline a card against a guy like Prates, a star-building exercise if there ever was one because it would be the most explosive non-title fight ever recorded. Rarely do contenders of such breadth face each other without golden accessories in play.
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Shavkat Rakhmonov? It is true that he beat Garry last December, but for the first time he looked mortal. It was billed as a title eliminator, but Shavkat has been dealing with an injury for most of 2025, making his eligibility somewhat abstract. If I’m in Shavkat’s camp, I’ll probably want to get on my feet with a fight against someone other than Makhachev upon my return, the same Makhachev who controlled Jack Della Maddalena for over 19 minutes at UFC 322 last week.
Any talk of Kamaru Usman surpassing 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. Alessio Di Chirico did the same. So did Kevin Holland a long time ago. Not discounting Buckley’s successes (he had won six in a row when Usman stole the momentum), but it is not a gateway to claiming the title.
Garry is the boy.
He went about his business all week in Qatar, appearing in court dressed in a black traditional dress and looking very much like 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) fight with UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev, bringing a Masvidian vibe to the proceedings.
“He’s low on energy,” Garry said of the most feared champion who followed him.Advertisement
The truth is that Garry doesn’t see it that way. Khamzat is just a guy. So is Islam, the champion now disguised as his belt. He sees himself as the bogeyman of the ranks and is always ready to prove it. Not many people were clamoring to fight Shavkat, but Garry did it not out of fighter duty but out of what seemed to some. pleasure. I wanted all the smoke. When Della Maddalena and Muhammad fought in Montreal in May, Garry stepped in as a substitute fighter just two weeks after beating Prates in Kansas City.
Some people love Ian Machado Garry. Some people can’t stand it. Some listen to his interviews and throw up a little in their mouths. The Irish are not as attentive to him as they were to Conor McGregor, as our own Petesy Carroll has pointed out, and Brazil see him as an overnight guest and prolong his stay. He was kicked out of gyms and dragged through the tabloid mud. He is as angry as he is nomadic. However, he has persevered and backed up at every stop his claims that he will fight anyone, 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 they don’t).
He may not have finished Muhammad, but Garry has done almost everything he said he would do. The man has more than earned his chance.