Carlos Prates has a plan for Michael Morales, and it doesn’t involve the scorecards. In an exclusive with LowKick MMA, Prates laid out how he intends to finish Morales at UFC 336. The full breakdown lives in that interview, and the headline alone tells you how he expects the night to go.
The more interesting part is how he got here. Prates was supposed to be talking about Islam Makhachev right now.
According to Dana White, Makhachev had verbally agreed to fight Prates in January before withdrawing. White confirmed it in comments picked up by The Mac Life. “Yeah, it was verbally agreed,” White said, before taking a gentle shot at his own champion’s schedule. “I don’t expect you to fight 3 times a year, but twice would be nice.”
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White also raised the matchmaker’s oldest complaint, which is that an inactive champion jams up everyone behind him. “You start to back up the division. There’s lots of guys who would like a shot for the title,” he said. He added that he had no idea what Makhachev was thinking or what he wanted to do next.
Prates was less diplomatic. In comments relayed by Brazilian reporter Laerte Viana and shared widely on X, he accused Makhachev of ducking him. “He chickened out,” Prates said. He claimed the UFC was angry about the withdrawal and argued that a healthy champion under contract has no business turning down fights. Then he offered Makhachev a way out: “If you don’t want to fight, vacate your belt and that’s it.”
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He wasn’t finished. Prates said that if Makhachev wasn’t sure about January, he should have kept quiet instead of talking about it publicly, and he went as far as saying a fake injury would have been the more respectable move. “It would honestly be less bad if you faked an injury and pretended you were hurt,” he said. He also promised that when the fight eventually happens, he’ll beat Makhachev twice as badly as he originally planned.
The beef carried over to social media. After Makhachev spoke at the UFC Performance Institute, Prates reposted the quote with three lying-face emojis and nothing else. In a week full of cryptic emoji posts, that’s the only kind I’ll accept, because everybody knew exactly what he meant.
So the January title shot is gone, and the name on Prates’ fight card is Michael Morales. Prates is betting on his hands to end it early, and he’s saying so out loud.
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My take: I love a guy who answers questions straight, and Prates answers them straighter than anyone at the top of the rankings. The danger is obvious, though. He’s spent the week talking about a champion who isn’t in the cage with him, while the man who is in the cage with him gets a full camp to watch film and read every quote. If Prates finishes Morales the way he says he will, White runs out of reasons to let the title sit. If he doesn’t, Makhachev gets to post the emojis.
