Belal Muhammad agrees with Dana White that Ian Machado Garry lacked killer instinct at UFC 330.
Machado Garry (17-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) was criticized by the UFC boss for being too friendly in his title loss to welterweight champion Islam Makhachev (29-1 MMA, 18-1 UFC) in Saturday's main event at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia. With one judge having the fight tied at two rounds a piece heading into Round 5, Muhammad expected Machado Garry to go for it more.
"What's with this hugging? You're down in the fifth round. You've got to have the killer instinct," Muhammad said on his YouTube channel. "You've got to for it. His face wasn't beat up. It was an Adesanya vs. Gastelum war where you're like, 'Let's do it.' You were losing. Mindset-wise, he needs
to flip the switch. His mindset was we didn't get tapped, we got up from a couple of takedowns, those are wins for him, and he has to change that. Stock-wise, he's going to learn from it. He's going to get better from it, but this game is unforgiving.
"You go against Morales next. You get one-punched and get knocked out. That head kick that Islam landed on you in the second round, if it knocked you out, it changes everything else. You can't waste an opportunity. You can't waste a moment, and I felt like he definitely wasted moments there. The one sequence that I was like Islam has this fight – obviously when it came to the fifth round, and he took the back, I was like, 'Oh, it's over.' When he had the body triangle in, I knew he wasn't going to get out of that situation. For Islam, that was his checkmate moment."
Machado Garry earned his title shot by defeating former welterweight champion Muhammad by unanimous decision at UFC Fight Night 265.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Belal Muhammad on Ian Machado Garry at UFC 330: 'What's with this hugging?'
