Islam Makhachev won’t be fighting over International Fight Week, according to UFC CEO Dana White.
Makhachev’s manager was on TMZ Sports yesterday discussing the No. 1 pound for pound fighter and welterweight champion’s next move. He implied a July fight was ‘a done deal,’ but that’s apparently not the case. White came out on social media to correct the record.
“Not true,” White wrote in an Instagram comment. “It’s August.”
We shouldn’t feel too surprised by this in retrospect because July’s UFC 327
looks like it will be headlined by the return of Conor McGregor, so the UFC doesn’t need to deploy Islam Makhachev at the same time. Pushing him back to headline an August card makes a lot of business sense, even if that marks nine long months since the top ranked fighter has competed.
There’s been no official word on who Makhachev might fight but reports coming out of Las Vegas have Ian Machado Garry as the frontrunner to fight Islam. The rankings back it up: Garry is No. 2 ranked at welterweight with the only fighter above him being Jack Della Maddalena, whom Makhachev trounced to take the title.
Is Garry the man to stay upright and give some trouble to Makhachev, who seemed perfectly content to take Della Maddalena down and grind him into dust over 25 minutes? We wouldn’t bet on it, but then again we didn’t expect Garry to hold his own against Shavkat Rakhmonov and he did better than anyone expected there.
Don’t expect an official announcement from the UFC any time soon on Makhachev’s return. The UFC still has to announce their big International Fight Week card for July before any thought towards making their August event official will happen. But we’ll keep you dialed into the backroom chatter as this story develops.
