Islam Makhachev has a chance to add to his already impressive resume when he defends his welterweight title for the first time at UFC 330 after already setting the record for the most title defenses in UFC lightweight history.<\/p>\n
As if defending belts in two divisions isn\u2019t enough, Makhachev can also break Anderson Silva\u2019s record for the most consecutive wins in UFC history with both tied at 16 currently. For everything that Makhachev has achieved, it\u2019s easy to understand why he\u2019s already entering the conversation as possibly the greatest of all-time but UFC CEO Dana White isn\u2019t ready to hand him that crown just yet.<\/p>\n
With Makhachev just days away from facing Ian Machado Garry in the UFC 330 main event, White prefers waiting at least until that fight ends before he starts stacking anymore accolades on Makhachev\u2019s resume.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think about that stuff until the fight happens,\u201d White said during the Contender Series post-fight press conference. \u201cWhen we see his performance on Saturday, let\u2019s see how it plays out, but obviously breaking [Anderson Silva\u2019s] record, you keep grinding, you keep fighting, you put your head down and just keep f*cking knocking guys down left and right, by the time you say \u2018you know what? I\u2019m done,\u2019 then we all figure out where he ends up in the big pictures. He\u2019s on the right path, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makhachev is already the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the sport and he can sit in even more rarified air if he defends his welterweight title on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
But until that fight happens, White isn\u2019t ready to start making any kind of declarations about Makhachev joining the GOAT conversation along other all-time greats like Jon Jones and Georges St-Pierre.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got all the things there to be the guy,\u201d White said. \u201cI think we should talk about this Saturday night after the fight and see what we all thing based on his performance on Saturday and breaking the record.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islam Makhachev has a chance to add to his already impressive resume when he defends his welterweight title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[829,99,6493,10080,6879],"class_list":["post-811038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-latest-news","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}