Cain Velasquez, the former UFC heavyweight champion and one of the scariest men to ever wear the strap, says a young Islam Makhachev used to hit him with things he never saw coming in the AKA practice room.
Velasquez told the story on the Shawn Ryan Show, according to Bloody Elbow. He admitted he doesn’t follow the UFC closely anymore. Makhachev is the exception. He still watches him.
“Islam is so skilled in the game, f ing good everywhere,” Velasquez said.
Then he got to the sparring. “When he was coming up, I’d spar with him. Like, light sparring, and he’d hit me with stuff and nobody hits me with stuff.”
Velasquez said the shots left him wondering where they had come from, and that his conclusion was simple: “this guy is good.”
The weight math makes the story land. Bloody Elbow put the difference in their fight weights at around 90 pounds. Velasquez was a heavyweight who spent his career walking through people. Makhachev was a lightweight prospect still living in the shadow of his mentor, Khabib Nurmagomedov. Velasquez credited Makhachev’s unorthodox striking for finding the gaps.
The AKA years
When Makhachev first came to the United States with Nurmagomedov, the two set up at the American Kickboxing Academy under coach Javier Mendez. Mendez threw them in with a room full of serious names. Along with Velasquez, the pair trained beside world champions Luke Rockhold, Daniel Cormier and Josh Thomson.
That was a brutal room to be the new guy in. It’s also apparently where a heavyweight champion first figured out the quiet Dagestani kid could crack.
Where Makhachev is now
The kid turned out fine. Makhachev won the lightweight title, defended it, and broke the long-standing record for 155-pound title defenses before he moved up. At welterweight he dominated Jack Della Maddalena to take the 170-pound belt, giving him gold in two divisions.
As for what’s next, Bloody Elbow also ran a separate piece on Kamaru Usman reacting to Makhachev rejecting a UFC 336 title defense. So the champ isn’t jumping at the first date the UFC put in front of him, and the next booking is still open.
Velasquez’s comments are worth a minute because he isn’t a guy who hands out compliments for content. He’s stepped away from the sport, he says he barely tracks it, and he still went out of his way on a long-form podcast to say Makhachev is good everywhere. Plenty of fighters hype up old training partners. Very few of them were heavyweight champions admitting a lightweight got through their guard. I’ve sat through a lot of fight-week hotel bar stories about who touched who in sparring, and most of them get bigger with every round of drinks. This one comes from the guy who got hit, which is the only kind I trust. For a fighter who built his reputation on grinding people down on the mat, Makhachev getting a heavyweight champion to say “where did that come from” about his hands is a better scouting report than any highlight reel.
