Ian Machado Garry started his camp for Islam Makhachev in Georgia, rolling with members of the country’s national wrestling team to get a feel for a style he expects to run into on Saturday night.
Garry challenges Makhachev for the UFC welterweight championship in the UFC 330 main event on Saturday, August 15 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia. The champion’s grappling has ended most arguments about how to beat him, so Garry went hunting for the closest thing to it he could find.
He walked through the trip in an interview with Daniel Cormier on the former champion’s YouTube channel.
“I’ve left no stone unturned. I traveled to Georgia. I felt some of the Georgian national wrestling team. I wanted to feel their style because it is a different style,” Garry said. “So I wanted to feel a more similar style to that. And that was the start of my camp. Then I went to Brazil and I met up with the team in Brazil and we discussed ways to work on the ground and then we evolved onto the feet.”
Garry has trained out of Chute Boxe Diego Lima in Brazil since 2023, and has leaned on Demian Maia for the grappling side of this camp.
Nine Months Of Preparing To Be Champion
He framed the whole build as something bigger than one opponent.
“I have over the last nine months prepared myself not to beat Islam, but to become the champion of the world,” Garry said. “I’m ready now to take the throne, to be the best in the world, to carry the burden of being that guy with the target on his back.”
Whether that preparation survives contact is the open question. Makhachev’s own corner has hinted the game plan may not be the obvious one, which complicates a camp built around anticipating Dagestani wrestling.
A Decade Of Domination
At 28, Garry treats the belt as an opening rather than a summit, and he pointed to two of the sport’s older champions as evidence there’s no clock on him.
“When I win on Saturday night against Islam Makhachev, I will forever more be a former UFC world champion,” he said. “And I have a destiny and a goal and a decade of domination if I choose to. I’m 28 years of age.”
Garry named Justin Gaethje and Alexander Volkanovski as his proof. Gaethje took the undisputed lightweight title from Ilia Topuria at 37 years old in June at the White House event, while Volkanovski, also 37, is still featherweight champion after outpointing Diego Lopes a second time in Sydney in January.
The decade has to start by ending the longest winning run in company history. Makhachev’s 16-fight streak ties Anderson Silva’s record, and even Dana White has told him to keep his head down before talking about all-time status.
