Islam Makhachev’s Biggest Tests Yet Ahead of Ian Machado Garry Showdown
Somewhere in a gym outside Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia, a teenage Islam Makhachev used to get thrown around by a slightly older, considerably meaner training partner by the name of Khabib Nurmagomedov. That relationship — student, then peer, then heir — is the whole story of how Makhachev became what he is now: the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.
The current welterweight king is 28-1. He’s tied Anderson Silva’s UFC record with 16 consecutive wins. He jumped a weight class last November and made the step up look almost insultingly easy, smothering Jack Della Maddalena for 25 minutes to become a two-division champion. Now, nine months later, he faces his first title defense against the highly rated striker Ian Machado Garry.
Can Garry Shock the World?
The Dubliner arrived in the UFC as a brash, occasionally insufferable prospect who talked like he’d already won the belt. Then Shavkat Rakhmonov beat him — barely, and on short notice, 48-47 across the board, in a fight where Garry nearly choked the Kazakh knockout artist out in the fifth round of his first career loss. Garry could’ve sulked. Instead, he went to Doha and sniped out former champion Belal Muhammad from long range over fifteen minutes. After that, he named his target. “Islam, you try to take me down,” he said. “I’m the best in the world.”
He may well be, but first, he has to prove it against the man who currently is. And if the latest betting odds are anything to go by, it’s the defending champion who is a head and shoulders clear of his upcoming challenger. Top crypto sports betting sites currently list Makhachev as a short-priced -350 favorite to defend the gold, with Garry out at +270 to spring the shock. But before the Irishman gets his chance to renew his country’s rivalry with Dagestan, which opponents have given Makhachev the toughest tests throughout his dominant UFC career? Let’s take a look.
Adriano Martins — Houston, 2015
Only one man has ever beaten Islam Makhachev, and that’s Adriano Martins. “Who?” we hear you ask. And you’d be right too.
Makhachev was 12-0 heading into UFC 192 in Houston and was expected to walk through a battle-worn 32-year-old journeyman. He pressed forward behind his southpaw jab the way he always does. Then he over-committed to a left hand. Martins slipped it, planted, and threw a single counter right hand that put Makhachev on the canvas before most of the crowd had processed what they were watching. The referee waved it off 1:46 into round one. Khabib was cageside. He’d never seen his training partner lose before.
Here’s the part that gets lost: Martins never cashed that win in. He didn’t win another fight for nine years. Meanwhile, the kid he knocked out spent the next decade becoming the most feared grappler of his generation, and Makhachev still calls it a lucky punch — but he’s also admitted, more than once, that it’s the reason his striking stopped being an afterthought. One counter right hand, thrown by a man who then vanished from relevance, still shapes how the current pound-for-pound king trains a decade later.
Alexander Volkanovski — Perth, 2023
Picture the RAC Arena with thousands of people who came to watch their featherweight champion become a two-division king on home soil. For four and a half rounds, Alexander Volkanovski gave them exactly what they wanted — out-landing Makhachev 164 strikes to 95, refusing to stay down, controlling stretches against the fence. Then, with barely a minute left on the clock, Volkanovski found a clean right hand and dropped the pound-for-pound king. He followed him down. Ground-and-pound rained in. For a few seconds, live, on pay-per-view, it looked like the throne was changing hands in real time.
It didn’t. Makhachev survived to the horn, and the scorecards — 48-47, 48-47, 49-46 — came back unanimous for him, though nobody watching would call it clean. Joe Rogan said flatly on his podcast that he thought Volkanovski had won it. The rematch, months later in Abu Dhabi, ended differently: Volk headed into the clash on less than a fortnight’s notice, and Makhachev duly finished him with a head kick in round one. But Perth is the fight people still bring up when they want to argue Makhachev is beatable.
Dustin Poirier — Newark, 2024
Dustin Poirier was 35 years old and out of second chances. Two prior undisputed title shots had ended in submission defeats, one of them to Makhachev’s friend and mentor Khabib, and everyone in Newark understood that this was his last shot. Makhachev opened as high as a -675 favorite. Nobody, Poirier included by his own admission, expected what happened.
The Diamond weathered a brutal first round on his back, then turned the fight into a war in the championship rounds, opening a gash on Makhachev’s forehead with his elbows until the champion — blood streaming down his face, visibly gassed — looked human for the first time in years.
Poirier was stalking him. One finish away from ending the greatest streak in UFC history and rewriting his own legacy in the same sentence. Instead, Makhachev found a desperate single-leg, chained it into a D’Arce choke, and tapped out the veteran war horse at 2:42 of round five.
Arman Tsarukyan — St. Petersburg, 2019
This is the one that never got its second chapter. Arman Tsarukyan was a 22-year-old nobody, thrown in on late notice to make his UFC debut against a rising Dagestani prospect nobody outside the sport had heard of yet. He didn’t just survive — he matched Makhachev in scrambles for fifteen minutes in what became Fight of the Night. Makhachev took the unanimous decision. Years later, he admitted he’d underestimated Tsarukyan going in, that he hadn’t even watched tape.
Tsarukyan spent the next six years building a case for revenge — a split-decision win over Charles Oliveira at UFC 300 among them — and finally got his rematch booked as the UFC 311 main event in January 2025. Then, one day before fight night, he withdrew with a back injury, and Renato Moicano stepped in on 24 hours’ notice instead. That withdrawal drew the ire of UFC head honcho Dana White, and Tsarukyan hasn’t been close to a title shot since.
