PHILADELPHIA — For all of the technical skill that Ian Machado Garry, the UFC’s No. 1-ranked welterweight, brings into Saturday’s UFC 330 main event, it’s his impenetrable level of self confidence that might be the biggest threat overall to pound-for-pound king Islam Makhachev’s 170-pound title.
Machado Garry (17-1), a 28-year-old native of Ireland, retained a visceral level of peace and calm at Wednesday’s media day despite the fact that he’s more than a 3-to-1 betting underdog against one of the greatest fighters in the history of the sport. But, then again, the brash fighter who gave himself the nickname of “The Future” during his amateur days and famously tattooed the phrase “The Future is Inevitable” across his chest, has always walked to the beat of his own drum.
As polarizing a fighter as there is in all of UFC today from the standpoint of fan reaction, Machado Garry doesn’t just believe with every fiber of his being that he’s days away from becoming welterweight champion, he believes something akin to the idea that he’s an actor in a film where the ending — spoiler alert — has already been determined in his favor.
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“It’s not that I think it, I’ve been shown it,” Machado Garry told CBS Sports. “I’ve seen it in my dreams and I’ve seen it in my mind. I can control the controllables and do what I need to do to be the best version of me but my path was paved before I came into this earth. I’m simply just walking the line of destiny.
“When I beat Islam Makhachev on Saturday night, it is undeniable that Ian Machado Garry is one of the greatest fighters of all-time.”
Islam Makhachev closing in on G.O.A.T. conversation with plenty still to accomplish ahead of UFC 330
Brian Campbell
Machado Garry isn’t just facing the world’s best fighter when he touches gloves with the Makhachev (28-1) inside of Xfinity Mobile Arena, he’s facing the possibility of becoming a historical footnote of the wrong kind as the 34-year-old native of Dagestan, Russia, attempts to best Anderson Silva‘s vaunted UFC record for consecutive victories at 17.
A true student of the game who has traveled the globe to sharpen his craft from gym to gym, eventually settling in recent years at the famed Chute Boxe Academy in Curitiba, Brazil, under the tutelage of former two-time UFC title challenger Demian Maia, Machado Garry has full respect for everything Makhachev has accomplished and is under no illusion as to how difficult this matchup is expected to be on paper.
“I think absolutely [Makhachev] has earned to be in the top 10 [of best UFC fighters in history],” Machado Garry said. “Lists are based on opinion but I think his resume, his longevity and his success in the sport absolutely warrants him to be in the top 10. Yes, he’s absolutely one of the greatest fighters that I have ever seen in this sport.”
Yet, through all of his lessons learned in the UFC, which included fighting the undefeated Shavkat Rakhmonov on relatively even terms in his lone career defeat in 2024 and following that up by surviving the knockout power of division upstart Carlos Prates in a 2025 decision win, Machado Garry truly believes that he can’t be broken inside the Octagon.
“Never. And if you want to go deep on this — and the truth is, most people watching this don’t have the emotional intelligence to understand this — but what’s there to lose?” Machado Garry said. “I am one of the greatest fighters on the planet already, right here and right now before I step foot in that Octagon on Saturday night. That’s not going to change — win, lose, win by knockout or get knocked out. That doesn’t change.
“What matters to me more than anything is the man I am, the person I am. The way I carry myself and the way the fans see me acting. I give them my time. I give my friends and my family all the time they deserve because they are far more important than this short, selfish, professional journey that I’m on. There is nothing to lose but everything to gain.”
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Machado Garry went to reference a lyric from one of his favorite songs that has become a bit of a mantra for him: “The journey is the treasure and if I’m not moving, I’m losing.” It’s part of the reason why he has so regularly leapfrogged from gym to gym, not just to improve his skillset as a fighter but to experience as many cultures as possible in order to evolve himself as a human.
But it was a conversation with former UFC welterweight title challenger Gilbert Burns during their time together at Kill Cliff FC in Deerfield Beach, Florida, that led Machado Garry to seek out time in Brazil. And the work he put in with Maia has aggressively improved his ground skills, which were on full display last November in a key victory over Belal Muhammad where Machado Garry stuffed every single takedown attempt by the former 170-pound champion.
“Since the day I met Demian Maia, it has been one focus and one focus only,” Machado Garry said. “The more I train with him, the more free I can be in striking knowing that I can handle anyone else in the world on the ground.”
Machado Garry’s ground skills will almost certainly be put to the test against Makhachev’s savant wrestling skills. Last November, when Makhachev captured the welterweight title from Jack Della Maddalena to become a two-division champion, he needed just four successful takedowns over five rounds to accumulate 19 minutes of ground control, which amounted to 76% of the 25-minute bout.
But when asked how confident he is in his takedown defense to avoid a similar outcome as what happened to JDM, Machado Garry took offense to the question.
“I think the wording of the question is a bit of favor towards [Makhachev],” Machado Garry said. “I think it’s a case of how can he get close to me? You can’t grab something that you can’t touch. You can’t wrestle me if you can’t catch me and hold me down. He has to get there in the first place. Every fight starts on the feet. He has to grab hold of me and every time he tries I’m going to hit him hard.”
Makhachev wasn’t as convinced that Machado Garry’s improvements will even matter in this matchup because, according to the champion, he proved against Della Maddalena that if he enters a fight without injuries or the kind of difficult weight cuts he previously endured at 155 pounds, there isn’t anyone who can stop him from making a fight look easy for 25 minutes on the ground.
“I don’t know if he improved or not. We will check how he improved because you can’t improve inside the training camp,” Makhachev told CBS Sports. “You will know if he has improved inside the fight. He has never met someone like me. He never found someone like me in Brazil, also. It’s going to be a tough fight for him and he’s going to meet the best fighter in the world.”
Ultimately, the key to Machado Garry’s success inside the Octagon has been his ability to block out the opinions of anyone who isn’t a member of his family or training team.
A longtime lightning rod for controversy in the court of public opinion online, Machado Garry fully admits “the world and me don’t see eye to eye sometimes on social media.” It started with his 2022 marriage, at just 24, to a 39-year-old British television presenter, the former Layla Anna-Lee, which included the young Irish star adding her maiden name of Machado to the surname of both himself and their three-year old son Leo, who has been present at every media stop this week.
Machado Garry has seen just about every aspect of his manhood and his marriage criticized publicly in recent years and his comments last month that “if women ruled the world, everything would be better” saw him draw public mockery from fellow UFC fighters like Sean O’Malley and Colby Covington, and even pushback from women’s strawweight champion Mackenzie Dern, who defends her title against Gillian Robertson in Saturday’s co-main event.
Things have been so toxic of late that Machado Garry opened Wednesday’s media day scrum by asking reporters not to ask him anything unprofessional that doesn’t have to do with fighting Makhachev. He then went on to explain to CBS Sports how he deals with all of the online negativity.
“There are things that matter to me in this world — my family, my kids, my team, the people I spend my days with, they matter to me,” Machado Garry said. “If they have something to say to me, I listen and respect them. I love them. I brought them into my team and into my life to listen to them and honor their work. Anything online is just outside noise. I am a fighter when I show up to these fight weeks. I am an athlete when I show up and train but every second of every day I’m a father and a husband and that means much more to me than anything else on this planet.
“If I wanted to stir the pot, trust me, I don’t have any time for it. But if I wanted to stir the pot, it would be a lot worse.”
This goes back to Machado Garry’s standard operating procedure, which is to control everything he can control in terms of preparing himself in camp and focusing solely on the mission at hand on Saturday. That goal is to fulfill all of the expectations and potential he has shown since making his UFC debut in 2021 and declaring himself, in the succession of fellow Irishman Conor McGregor, as the next big thing who is ready to take over the sport.
And if the visions Machado Garry has had and the story he so often tells himself is true, both the welterweight division and the sport’s P4P rankings are about to be flipped upside down fairly soon.
“I think Islam and his team are well aware of how talented and how good I am and that’s why they waited so long to accept the fight,” Machado Garry said. “Without a shadow of a doubt, I can tell you right now that on Saturday, Aug. 15 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and every fan tuning in across the globe for this fight, you are going to see greatness in action. You are going to see two of the greatest athletes this sport has ever seen compete at the highest level for the belt that means the most.
“The UFC title is on the line so stay tuned and see who’s the best.”
