Media Islam Makhachev eyeing a return after Ramadan, says he was offered a fight for January but turned it down, possibly against Morales

So he was just in camp waiting for the UFC to come up with a name before Ramadan, and they decided to hand in their homework super late on short notice for maybe their most popular champ who they knew famously doesn't fight during a specific time period every year?

It would sound too dumb to believe if it wasn't the UFC

Edit *
Actually, I don't believe it. The only January event is 324, and it had the Harrison-Nunes co main and Interim Justin-Paddy main announced since 11/27.  Maybe they want to triple header strack the deck for the first Paramount event, but I feel like all of this was known in November, so there's no way he's getting a December call about this.

325 is Feb 1, so one could guess he's arbitrarily calling that "January" but considering that's an Aussie card headlined by Volk, I doubt it. Most likely, he's exaggerating some late November calls as "December" (between 11/20 - 11/26), about a 1/24 fight. So just around 2 months heads up
 
Last edited:
That must be in March. So, April-May does sound good. That Islam/Morales fight would've been cool though.
 
Mohawk Banditó said:
So he was just in camp waiting for the UFC to come up with a name before Ramadan, and they decided to hand in their homework super late on short notice for maybe their most popular champ who they knew famously doesn't fight during a specific time period every year?
Click to expand...
Why doesn’t he fight at that specific time? He has no legit reason for holding the mma community hostage to his religious beliefs.

There is NOTHING that says Muslims have to observe Ramadan at that SPECIFIC time.
 
I think Islam's team wants to avoid the Morales fight. If Islam defends the title vs Morales next and wins, you can argue hes the best MMA fighter of all time and Ill agree with you. But I expect hes going to keep pushing for Usman.

They need to match up this dicision right. Have Islam vs Morales next and do Shavkat vs Usman on the same card. If Usman wins, Islam gets the legacy fight he so badly wants and it wont be a pathetic farce. If Shavkat wins, he will have another surging, huge, undefeated title challenger to prove himself against. It should be win-win, unless they're scared.
 
Islam's return will magically be the White House card, after Garry, Morales, Shavkat, and co have all had to fight each other around April/May while he "can't fight". After assessing the victors, Islam will suddenly turn around and announces his return being that specific card that they all need to make a quick battle torn turnaround to fight him while he's perfectly fresh and has been preparing all around.

Like Islam has been doing for years now. Islam never fights unless he has the advantage. He's not wrong for it, but it's obvious and unfair.
 
Mohawk Banditó said:
So he was just in camp waiting for the UFC to come up with a name before Ramadan, and they decided to hand in their homework super late on short notice for maybe their most popular champ who they knew famously doesn't fight during a specific time period every year?

It would sound too dumb to believe if it wasn't the UFC

Edit *
Actually, I don't believe it. The only January event is 324, and it had the Harrison-Nunes co main and Interim Justin-Paddy main announced since 11/27.  Maybe they want to triple header strack the deck for the first Paramount event, but I feel like all of this was known in November, so there's no way he's getting a December call about this.

325 is Feb 1, so one could guess he's arbitrarily calling that "January" but considering that's an Aussie card headlined by Volk, I doubt it. Most likely, he's exaggerating some late November calls as "December" (between 11/20 - 11/26), about a 1/24 fight. So just around 2 months heads up
Click to expand...
The real give away that the UFC got absolutely fucked in whatever their plans were for UFC 324 is that Paddy/Gaethje is the headliner.

Look, maybe they really did plan that Paddy/Gaethje would be the interim belt after Ilia ended up with all these personal problems and couldn't defend in January like was seemingly the real plan. It's not the worst interim fight available assuming Arman is blacklisted and Max is still recovering from his hand injury. It's fine. It's whatever. It works as an interim title fight.

BUT the UFC's "rules" are that undisputed title fights headline over interim title fights, then they go by gender, then they go by weight, then BMF last. The final product is usually that the highest male undisputed fight > highest female undisputed fight > interim fights > BMF fights... Yet here Paddy/Gaethje, an interim title fight, is headlining over Kayla/Nunes, an undisputed fight. This shouldn't happen. The only times this kinda bout order fuckery happens is if you're dealing with Conor McGregor star power. This isn't that, Paddy is nowhere near that. I know people will pretend that maybe the UFC *thinks* he is, but they're the ones with the numbers to know he's not. Paddy/Gaethje is headlining to avoid the embarassment of their first Paramount card being Kayla/Nunes (meanwhile they've had Nunes headline PPVs so you know they're fine with her).

The only real available explanation we've got is that the UFC really did expect an undisputed male title fight for UFC 324 and only recently got fucked over that they had to instead resort to bending the rules for this. Which shouldn't surprise anybody. All you have to do is look at the roster and see they had some really bad cards in their hands, that got worsened in the fall shakeups.
 
Great. Islam flat out telling us that he’s happy to sit out for the first half of 2026 so he can starve himself and wait for a fight with Marty on the stupid trump rally card. What a dog shit champion. Hope you neckbeardos are happy.
 
HuskySamoan said:
I think Islam's team wants to avoid the Morales fight. If Islam defends the title vs Morales next and wins, you can argue hes the best MMA fighter of all time and Ill agree with you. But I expect hes going to keep pushing for Usman.

They need to match up this dicision right. Have Islam vs Morales next and do Shavkat vs Usman on the same card. If Usman wins, Islam gets the legacy fight he so badly wants and it wont be a pathetic farce. If Shavkat wins, he will have another surging, huge, undefeated title challenger to prove himself against. It should be win-win, unless they're scared.
Click to expand...
Why not have Shavkat vs Islam? Morales seems great but he is one more guy short IMO. Shavkat already earned his title shot and was only left sitting because of Islam jumping the line for his perfect WW style match up.

Usman wants to earn another shot and Morales IMO needs to earn his so matching them up makes sense as a #1 contender match.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,280,500
Messages
58,289,600
Members
175,996
Latest member
blainepsychiatry

Share this page

Back
Top