{"id":941455,"date":"2026-10-26T11:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/941455\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T11:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:06:16","slug":"islam-makhachev-reveals-why-he-turned-down-january-fight-with-carlos-prates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/941455\/","title":{"rendered":"Islam Makhachev reveals why he turned down January fight with Carlos Prates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Islam Makhachev has spoken up about why he\u2019s not fighting Carlos Prates in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">For the last few weeks, the MMA world has been flooded with rumors that Makhachev would defend his welterweight title against Prates at UFC 336 in January; however, on Saturday, the UFC announced that those rumors are untrue. Instead, Prates will take on Michael Morales for an interim welterweight title at UFC 336, with the winner unifying against Makhachev sometime next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g79 _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">\u201cPrates and Morales will fight, determine who a true worthy contender, and I will fight [the winner]. They will [fight] among themselves. \u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1bij9g79 _1bij9g78 _1mt21p01\">\u201cThey offered me a fight with Prates, who recently lost to a [Ian Machado Garry] who I beat. If I beat him, Morales would already be next in line, who\u2019s not fighting and waiting for [a title shot]. Just let them fight and we will figure out who is the real challenger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Ramadan begins on Feb. 7 and concludes on March 8 in 2027, meaning it is unlikely we will see Makhachev again until next summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islam Makhachev has spoken up about why he\u2019s not fighting Carlos Prates in January. For the last few&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-941455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}