beat Ian Machado Garry<\/a> in August to defend his welterweight title in a 17th-straight victory in the UFC.<\/p>\nThe win meant Makhachev, who is a former lightweight world champion, broke Anderson Silva’s 13-year record for the longest win streak in UFC history.<\/p>\n
Makhachev says he wants to prove again he is “the best in the world” by facing the winner of Brazil’s Carlos Prates and Ecuador’s Michael Morales.<\/p>\n
The pair are set to fight for the interim welterweight belt at UFC 336 on 30 January.<\/p>\n
“My next fight is one of the last in my career,” said Makhachev.<\/p>\n
“They say Prates is too dangerous for me and Morales is too good for me.<\/p>\n
“So I want to face the best of them and prove to the world once again who is the best in world.”<\/p>\n
UFC president Dana White has said Makhachev was originally scheduled to defend his belt against Prates in January, but opted to delay fighting until after Ramadan in March.<\/p>\n
White added he thought Makhachev was “holding up the division”, which was why he chose to create the interim bout between Prates and Morales.<\/p>\n
Makhachev later said the bout between the pair will determine “the true worthy contender”.<\/p>\n
Makhachev is widely regarded as one of the best fighters in UFC history after winning 29 of his 30 fights.<\/p>\n
In August, White said Makhachev was “on the right path” to being regarded as the greatest fighter in the promotion’s history.<\/p>\n
Prates, 33, has won his last three fights by knockout, while Morales, 27, has won all 19 of his professional fights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC welterweight champion Islam Makhachev says his next fight will be “one of the last” of his illustrious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,82],"class_list":["post-952564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952564","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=952564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}