Who will Islam Makhachev fight next following his UFC 330 win over Ian Machado Garry? The UFC made it clear that there are two potential contenders. The crowd cam repeatedly switched back and forth between Carlos Prates and Michael Morales, with the commentary team bigging both men up as deserving of a title shot.<\/p>\n
Why not, indeed. Possibly because the UFC loves having two contenders around so they can offer the fight to the less picky, less demanding choice. Since that\u2019s a prisoner\u2019s dilemma that leaves both men racing to the bottom, it looks like Michael Morales would rather fight to figure out who the true No. 1 contender is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the guy have two arms, two legs, one dick like me, bro, I can fight him,\u201d Prates declared regarding Morales\u2019 challenge. \u201cHe said I\u2019m scared about him? I\u2019m not scared to fight you, I\u2019m the No. 1 contender so I want to fight for the belt. UFC never offered a fight against you. If they offer me, of course I will knock you out really fast. First round.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo don\u2019t worry. You gonna fight and I\u2019m gonna knock you out. But now, wait. Get my belt, and then we can fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ready to fight,\u201d Morales replied simply. \u201cJust let me know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prates vs. Morales for No. 1 contender status is a sick fight and we\u2019d love to see it. But the timing at this point isn\u2019t great. As Makahchev pointed out, the best time would have been at UFC 330. Now you\u2019d have to book the fight and give both men 3 months to prepare, putting the fight in December. Three months after that and you\u2019ve got Ramadan, and Makhachev doesn\u2019t fight or even train during Ramadan.<\/a><\/p>\n The best consolation prize for no Prates vs. Morales is having Makhachev fight more often. The two-division champion has often said he\u2019s not the one delaying fights, and that he\u2019d like to fight more than once every 9 to 12 months. Well then, let\u2019s see him fight Prates in December or January and Morales in June.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s just quit it with the non-fighting, though. If Morales wants to hold his top spot, let\u2019s see him fight again in the meantime, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who will Islam Makhachev fight next following his UFC 330 win over Ian Machado Garry? The UFC made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":862577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,702],"class_list":["post-862576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}