Carlos Prates isn\u2019t done ripping into Islam Makhachev over the welterweight champion\u2019s refusal to fight him in January.<\/p>\n
Makhachev was expected to face Prates at UFC 336 in Toronto on January 30th, but a late change in Makhachev\u2019s plans led to the UFC booking Carlos Prates vs. Michael Morales<\/a> for the interim welterweight title instead. According to UFC, Makhachev said he wouldn\u2019t be ready to compete in January (despite demanding a January return date<\/a> following his win over Ian Machado Garry in August).<\/p>\n Soon after, Islam released a statement<\/a> saying Prates and Morales needed to fight each other to figure out who was the true No. 1 contender, and he\u2019d fight that person later on. Fan sentiment hasn\u2019t been on his side since that statement, and Prates has been slamming<\/a> Makhachev online for ducking him. That led to Makhachev manager Ali Abdelaziz firing back.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a contender,\u201d Abdelaziz wrote. \u201cIslam is the champion and maybe the greatest fighter of this generation. Talk less, because he\u2019ll make you look bad. None of you add to his legacy. He fights for passion, love of the sport, and the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf he fights for passion, he would fight the number 1 contender in January,\u201d Prates responded. \u201cI will not add anything on his legacy, I will finish his legacy brother. And also, he will make me look great. Mark my words.\u201d<\/p>\n The words of Makhachev and his team aren\u2019t resonating with fans because Carlos Prates is the worthy next challenger for the title. This isn\u2019t a situation where there are no contenders left and the UFC is serving up the best of the rest. Prates is not only the most active and legitimate challenger, he\u2019s extremely popular as well.<\/p>\n Welterweight is a messy logjam at the top, partially because of Makhachev\u2019s habit of only fighting once every 10 months. For years fans laid that scheduling blame on the UFC. Now they have an example where it\u2019s clearly Makhachev\u2019s decision, and he\u2019s getting all the hate, deserved or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Prates isn\u2019t done ripping into Islam Makhachev over the welterweight champion\u2019s refusal to fight him in January.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,702],"class_list":["post-949355","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\/949355","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=949355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}