Ian Machado Garry believes he’s in the new UFC welterweight champion’s head.
Two weeks ago at UFC 315, Jack Della Maddalena upset the now-former champion Belal Muhammad via a unanimous decision to further shake up the UFC’s 170-pound landscape. After a big unanimous decision win of his own against Carlos Prates two weeks prior, Garry accepted the back-up role for the title tilt and made the trip to Montreal, Canada, to watch from cageside.
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During the fight week, Della Maddalena fired a seemingly minor verbal shot at Garry during the pre-fight press conference, saying he didn’t believe Garry’s son was his. The comment came after Garry had his son go up to Della Maddalena earlier in the week with a bag of M&M’s. Della Maddalena’s coach, Ben Vickers, has since added flames to the fire, claiming Garry needs more finishes before being worthy of a title shot.
Speaking on Monday’s edition of “The Ariel Helwani Show,” Garry responded to all the banter that has transpired since UFC 315 fight week.
“In his last four fights, Jack has had one finish,” Garry said. “[Vickers] is telling me I need to get into the gym, and I need to start finding some power? [Della Maddalena] got beat up pretty bad. I’ve seen his face. Belal ain’t nowhere near the striker that I am. I think we can both agree with that. Belal ain’t nothing compared to me on the feet, but he looked rough. I’ll bend his nose backwards the way it should be. His coach can stay out of this.
“My son giving him M&Ms was a playful joke about having a laugh at him missing weight. It’s all good. It’s all a bit of banter. I’m not flying around the world trying to be a superstar, trying to be someone famous. I’m flying around the world ready to fight, and if I’m needed, I’ll show up and do what I need to do to fight. If he’s the champion, I’ll take the belt from his hands.
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“There’s a playful joke about a child giving a fighter M&Ms with the baseline comedy of, ‘Take these, eat these, miss weight, my daddy will step in and win a world title.’ That’s just a laugh, right?” Garry continued. “That’s just low-level. Then going out and saying the comments that he said is just immature, and it shows that he’s very sensitive because if he says something like that, that’s out of his character, which means what I was doing on fight week irritated him enough to trigger him to say something like that. When I do fight him, I’m gonna open a whole can of irritation because I reckon that he’s mentally weak. I can get in his head, but I’ll never stoop so low as to mention his child and his wife because I don’t need to. I’ll walk in there in the Octagon, I’ll thump the mouth off him. I’ll take his belt, then I don’t need to say anything.”
Despite the budding rivalry, Garry said he was impressed by the new champion’s performance and highlighted how he deserves credit for stifling Muhammad’s grappling offense. Watching the fight in person, Garry felt Della Maddalena looked a bit slower than he expected, but he had a different perspective upon rewatch.
Ultimately, Garry won’t be Della Maddalena’s first title defense, as the now-former UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev is set to move up in weight and challenge for that title later this year. Although Garry believes he should get the opportunity next, he’s not complaining about the all-time great Makhachev cutting the welterweight line later this year.
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“He should be next, and there’s me saying, ‘I’m next in line. I’m all this.’ I’ve said that everybody should take a step back for the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world,” Garry said. “If he wants to come up and try to achieve that double champ status or come up and try to beat Jack, then off you go. I think that’s well earned and well deserved.
“Islam is phenomenal, and he’s good everywhere, but size matters. When you’re talking about an extra 15 pounds and you look at the size of [Alex] Volkanovski vs. Jack Della Maddalena, there’s a big size discrepancy. Jack’s a much bigger human. ‘Volk’ gave him a good fight. Then, stylistically, when you look at someone like Dustin Poirier, and the fight that he gave Islam, that was a very good fight. It wasn’t absolutely, completely dominant by Islam. It was a tough fight. Then you add in an extra 15 pounds?
” … I know how strong people have said Islam is, but I feel like Jack could get it done,” he continued. “There’s a world where I can see both. I can absolutely see Islam coming in and doing what Islam does, going out there and looks like the phenomenal mixed martial artist he is. But I can also see Jack get it done with just clean boxing and takedown defense.”
With all the moving parts already in play at welterweight, Makhachev will add another wrinkle. The potential timeline leads Garry to expect Della Maddalena vs. Makhachev in October.
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Garry has stayed busy over the last 12 months, with three fights under his belt. Although he wanted the title shot next, his mental shift has been toward continuing the trajectory he put himself on after beating Carlos Prates last month.
But who does Garry fight next? The current No. 6-ranked contender says he’ll say yes to anyone the UFC offers him — whether that’s the top-ranked Sean Brady or not.
“I don’t want to be a political fighter,” Garry said. “The welterweight division is in a phenomenal place right now, and it’s crazy. It’s awesome to see and it’s exciting for me, but we still got people like Kamaru Usman, Leon Edwards and Colby [Covington] trying to hold onto that link. They should just leave. They should be done by this point. I don’t want to be that political person who sits there and goes, ‘I’m not going to fight. I’m just going wait.’ No. I’ll never do that. I want to be active, I want to be one of the best, and I want to prove that I’m the best in the world.
“You also got this scenario where I fight Sean Brady, for example, I beat Sean Brady, and I’m still not next. Because that’s how the world works sometimes, and they do give it to Shavkat [Rakhmonov], who’s coming off a year layoff, just like they did to Jack. … So there is no guarantees. For me, when you say something like that, you’ve got to put it into perspective. I think Jack wants to go Islam, if he wins or if he loses, I think next is probably gonna be Shavkat. And I think that’ll be March, or potentially even after Ramadan. If Islam wins, it’s definitely not going to be defended until probably after Ramadan. That could be a long time until we see two title defenses in the division.
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“I believe I’ve done enough to earn a title shot,” Garry concluded. “I’ve shown up on back-to-back occasions and helped the UFC out of a hole. I’ve shown up against two of the most dangerous fighters in the world, and I proved that I’m one of the best in the world. I go out there and dominate someone like Carlos Prates on three weeks’ notice, I show the world how good I am. But I am absolutely someone who wants to keep this momentum going, and I want to put fear into the rest of the division.”
This past weekend, the welterweight division continued to filter out veteran presences. At UFC Vegas 106, Gilbert Burns took the fall, losing via strikes in Round 1 to the surging 25-year-old Michael Morales.
The Ecuadorian fighter extended his undefeated record to 18-0 with the Burns victory. Afterward, he took to the microphone to target Garry for his next time out, and expanded on that when speaking Monday on “The Ariel Helwani Show.”
“I want to beat him up. … I don’t like him,” Morales said. “I believe he’s been very disrespectful with fighters that I admire like Belal or [Neil] Magny. They don’t deserve to be disrespected. I think he talks a lot. One time, he had some problems in the [UFC Performance Institute] with some people I know. When I found out, I wanted to see what he was doing, but he wasn’t there. So after that, I just want to choke him out.”
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Hearing the comments came as somewhat of a surprise to Garry, not because of any past relationships but because of the heat behind them.
“If he has a problem, then let him keep the problem. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him, said a word to him, or anything at all,” Garry responded.
Regardless of Morales’ emergence in the top 10, Garry isn’t shying away from the challenge if the UFC approaches him next with the name. In fact, he was even impressed by the performance, as much as he would have preferred the one-time title challenger in Burns getting his hand raised.
“I watched the fight against Gilbert,” Garry said. “Gilbert’s a good friend of mine, so I had to watch it. Yeah, he did what he needed to do. I thought Gilbert looked good early on. Gilbert looked a lot more energetic than we’ve seen in the past, and against a bigger guy, he looked good. Morales went out and did what he needed to do, and that’s the fighter in him.”
