RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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You see what’s happening here, don’t you? These … these challengers like Ian Machado Garry … they’re trying to homogenize the ranks.
With Ilia Topuria and Khamzat Chimaev having already lost this summer, and Alex Pereira getting shut down in his bid for a third title at the White House, Islam Makhachev has emerged as the last of the GOAT(hican)s. Should he cede his welterweight title to Garry on Saturday in Philadelphia we will be seeing the UFC in a light that we aren’t used to.
That is, as a league of unextraordinary gentlemen.
There won’t be any tyrants left holding belts. We won’t have a fallback Anderson Silva or a stubborn Georges St-Pierre or a “Mighty Mouse” refusing to lose or a Jonny “Bones” Jones out there bleating from the top of the field. We won’t even have an Israel Adesanya to reassure us that dominance, as we’ve come to know it, is still a thing.
Instead, should Garry follow the summer theme by upsetting a GOAT-like champion, we’d have a blue-collar workforce holding belts.
Look at the list.
We’re facing the possibility of having the Tom Aspinall/Ciryl Gane heavyweight champion Janus face holding titles, alongside Carlos Ulberg (205), Sean Strickland (185), Ian Garry (!), Justin Gaethje (155), Alexander Volkanovski (145), Petr Yan (135) and Joshua Van (125).
Longshoremen, stevedores and jab-savvy cartwrights.
On the women’s side Valentina Shevchenko is still a terrific standard, though she has long been considered vincible, and bantamweight champ Kayla Harrison has already telegraphed her intentions to make her reign short-lived. If Amanda Nunes comes back and beats her? We’ll see.
But Islam, who is trying to top Silva’s all-time consecutive win streak, is all that’s left of the UFC’s poster rulers, those automatic betting favorites who are supposed to win every fight, seen as they are as leagues above the rest. The UFC has always had dominant champions. The crazy thing is that any of the names within that group of current champions could end up being an underdog in their next title defense, which signals a new day in the sport.
We’ve arrived at a league of parity; the plateau, it can be said, is the new peak.
I point all this out because for as long as there’s been a UFC in the 21 st century there have been staples of dominance, those fighters that headline big events as the pillars of the industry. Even though UFC 330 isn’t the greatest card the UFC has ever assembled, the fact that Makhachev is on it does away with a great many shortcomings. The fact that he’s facing Garry, a fighter the fans love to hate, gives his first welterweight title defense a sense of purpose.
If Garry wins, the concept of superfights takes a mighty blow. Earlier this year we bemoaned not getting Topuria-Makhachev, seeing it as the best fight that could be made. Would Gaethje-Garry qualify as a consolation prize?
Only Makhachev is left to have a say. These are strange times.
The UFC has always had those transcendent figures looking down at their classes. In the pay-per-view era, this structure was not only the norm but the mandate. There had to be dominant champions to sell the stakes. Why? Because a challenger can only shock the world if he’s made to defy the “no chance in hell” decrees.
Everyone knows that the best moments are the ones that shatter our strongest hunches, when contenders overcome collective doubt. Yet those moments can only be best if they seldom happen. The job of a dominant champion is to crush hope, which is a trade secret for keeping order.
Islam Makhachev, double champion and destroyer of hope. Jeff Bottari via Getty Images
Nah, it’s up to Islam to be the one who stays. He’s not just defending the welterweight title out in Philadelphia; he’s defending the UFC’s tradition of brand ambassadors. Despots. Champions that casuals can be awed by whenever they hear the name. Larger than life targets who hold the bar. Those who carry the belt around so naturally that it becomes a tan line along their shoulders.
Invincibles is what I’m saying, damnit!
Those who can’t be touched!
As of July’s edition of the Uncrowned’s men’s pound-for-pound rankings , Makhachev sits in the No. 1 spot as the best fighter on the planet. The next man up? Ex-flyweight champion Alexandre Pantoja, who lost his title to young Joshua Van at UFC 323 in December. It was a fluky ordeal, you might recall, as he dislocated his elbow trying to catch a fall early in the fight, but it left him with a definitive “L” either way. Van has even gone on to defend his title against Tatsuro Taira back in May.
Yet as each giant gets slayed, Pantoja, even without the belt, is slowly defaulting his way to the top. And right after him is Volkanovski, the guy who lost twice to Islam a few years back, and who got smoked by Topuria before his recent resurrection.
If Islam loses on Saturday night, perseverance replaces dominance. At least for the time being. The tendency is always to pull for the underdog. But when underdogs begin to rule the world, you get to looking around for the stabilizing force.
It’s down to Makhachev.
“I think he’s good person, good guy, but he act like he’s bad boy, something like this,” Makhachev said during media day. “We’ll make him humble, we’ll make him good guy.”
Aw yes, the old way. Just like his cousin Khabib Nurmagomedov used to do. Remember this run? The old way is to humble a challenger and to rule with an iron fist. That kind of thing is so old you don’t see it as much anymore.
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