UFC 330 saw Islam Makhachev make history, winning his 17th fight in a row, to break Anderson Silva’s record. Oh, he also beat Ian Machado Garry to defend his welterweight title to do so. After the fight, Makhachev said he was targeting 20 consecutive wins, a mark that would be nigh unbeatable. But should he?
Islam seems sensible enough to know when to call it a day and retire. In an ideal world, how many more fights should he take and against whom?
The honest answer is that he should continue fighting for as long as he either wants to or is capable of doing so at a high level. Many fans won’t agree, but retiring to preserve a résumé is weak sauce. If he still loves fighting and can still fight, he should keep fighting until such time as one of those two things changes.
But if you are looking at Makhachev’s career through the most cynical lens possible and only focused on maximizing legacy and minimizing risk, he should probably fight one more time and then hang up the gloves.
I do not care for Jon Jones, and when he was doing the whole tortured heavyweight title reign, I hated every bit of it. I felt it was a transparently opportunistic farce, and had no respect for it. BUT, I said from the very beginning and have never once changed my mind that it was smart prize fighting.
Waiting until Francis Ngannou left the UFC to move up is just smart. Defending the title against the shell of a former champion is smart. Trying to fight a smaller man who you have a huge stylistic advantage over instead of a bigger, stronger, younger opponent is smart. The man was picking his battles to minimize risk and maximize gain, and in 20 years, most people won’t remember that he ducked Tom Aspinall. They’ll just see that he was a two-division champion.
Makhachev is in a similar position right now. Not in that his second title run is a farce — far from it, he’s the only good double champion in UFC history — but that he can pick and choose his spots, if he wants to. Carlos Prates is a legitimate opponent for Makhachev, but he also appears to be a good matchup for him. Morales, not as much. So if Makhachev beats Prates, the safest course of action would be to then walk away, having done something no one else has done in the men’s weight classes (multiple defenses in multiple weight classes) and never run the risk of fighting the younger, stronger challenger.
But if he does stick around and add two more, then his GOAT case becomes extremely strong. So that’s sort of the question he has to answer: do you want to try to become a special level of legendary at the risk of losing some of your luster, or quit while you’re ahead?
A smart man would choose the latter. Las Vegas is built on men chasing the dragon one too many times, and for as great as Makhachev is, I don’t think his target of 20 consecutive wins is achievable. But if he does pull it off, then he probably is just the GOAT. And that’s a lot of temptation.
Did you leave UFC 330 more or less convinced either Prates or Morales knocks Makhachev out in his next fight?
Neither. I never thought Prates would, and I still don’t. Morales is a total question mark for me, and remains so.
After thinking about this for several days, my biggest takeaway from UFC 330 is not pretty boring: Ian Garry was a horrible style matchup for Islam to look good against. Garry is a defense-first fighter, and considerably larger than Makhachev. There’s just no real way to excel against him. If Garry opened up his offense more, that would open up more opportunities for Islam, but he didn’t, so we got the fight we got.
Really, the only thing I take from that fight is that Makhachev is still crazy strong at this weight class, even if he’s undersized. I still don’t think Prates can grapple with him, and that’s means he wins. As for Morales, we can all imagine how Morales wins, but we’ve also never seen him fight a great defensive fighter, or really lose a phase of a fight at all. It’s unlikely he bombs Islam out like he did Sean Brady, so how does he react when he’s not just the hammer? There are still a ton of questions for Morales.
Is Dern actually as good as she looked in the first two rounds or is Strawweight this bad? Oh how I miss the days of Joanna, Rose pre-Esparza debacle, and peak Weili. Perhaps I’m just too jaded, but 115 feels almost as meh as 135 once you get past Kline and Thainara.
Welcome to the Mackenzie Dern experience!
Seriously, this is who Dern is, and it’s why I love her. For stretches of a fight, she looks like a world-beater, and you can understand how she was once the greatest BJJ player in the world. Then for other stretches she looks like she’d get thumped by a random lady in a Wal-Mart parking lot fight. She’s the physical embodiment of the Dril Tweet about how there is no difference between good and bad.
But as to your other point, you’re not jaded: 115 used to be better. All of women’s MMA is in a down period right now, even 115. Granted, it’s not as bad as 135, and we do have some young talent emerging, but the weight class is in transition right now. Honestly, it might be better if Zhang Weili didn’t come back and simply let strawweight work through this period until Kline can get the title. Otherwise, she’ll come back and reclaim the belt, and then Kline will lose, and we’ll be stuck here for even longer.
(non-330 related) What is the optimal night for MVPFL: Should they consider Sunday nights instead of Friday?
Back in the day, WWF/WWE had their PPV’s on Sunday nights and did well. MVPFL might do better on a slow Sunday evening as a UFC dessert than on a Friday night as a UFC appetizer. People go out more on Fri nights as well. Or do you think another night would be better?
I can’t speak to the success of WWE on Sunday nights, but Sunday would be a terrible idea. For one thing, Sunday is a school night. People have to get up early on Monday morning to go to school or work, and they usually don’t want to stay up until midnight or later. Even for UFC White House, this was a legitimate problem, with people texting me that they weren’t staying up for this.
The other issue with Sunday is that MVPFL is courting the American audience, and for half of the year, Sunday Night Football would counter-program them in the worst way.
The answer is Friday night. It’s not perfect, but Saturdays are taken. You can’t have Saturdays. But Friday is still a weekend night, and you have no real opposition for American viewing audiences. Friday Night Fights with MVPFL. Just do it.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone who sent in questions! Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because every week I put a prompt into The Feed for your questions. Fire them there, and I’ll answer the best ones in the Mailbag and try to get to the rest in the responses.
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