Carlos Prates has stopped waiting politely. In an interview with Squawka, the Brazilian welterweight went after UFC welterweight champion Islam Makhachev’s schedule, and he set a soft deadline. With reports suggesting Makhachev could return after Ramadan, Prates said that if the champion comes back at that point and says he isn’t ready, he should seriously consider retiring. The Mac Life summed up the interview as Prates suggesting Makhachev is too lazy to fight him.
Prates also pulled Khabib Nurmagomedov, Makhachev’s mentor and longtime training partner, into it.
“I think Khabib and Islam, they’re the same,” Prates said. “They book fights when they want, when they feel really good.” He allowed that this is their right as champions, then kept going. “When Khabib was champ, he did the same. You wait too long to fight; do maybe one fight per year. It is what it is. I don’t think it’s the right way to do things.”
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The frustration has a specific origin. Before Prates was booked against Ecuadorian contender Michael Morales for UFC 336 on January 30, reports had him lined up for a title shot. Dana White confirmed Makhachev had verbally agreed to the fight. Then Makhachev pulled out, saying he expected the top contenders to clear the division before anyone called him out.
Makhachev followed that with a post on X that sounded like a man counting down. “My next fight is one of the last in my career,” he wrote. “They say Prates is too dangerous for me and Morales is too good for me. So I want to face the best of them and prove to the world once again who is the best in the world.”
Prates didn’t buy the retirement framing. “Why is Makhachev talking about retirement?” he said. “Maybe he made enough money and just wants to enjoy time with his family in his own country and take care of his family. That’s what everybody should do. At some point, you stop and take care of family, health, and everything. I think he’s doing the right thing.”
The activity gap is real. Prates fought four times in 2024 and three times in 2025. This year has been the outlier, with one appearance, against Jack Della Maddalena on May 2. Makhachev has kept to one or two fights a year. When he submitted Renato Moicano with a D’Arce choke at 4:05 of Round 1 at UFC 311 in January 2025, he moved to 27-1. Khabib’s reign followed a similar rhythm. His only fight in 2020, the year he retired, was the Justin Gaethje defense, which came 13 months after he submitted Dustin Poirier in the third round in Abu Dhabi. That Poirier fight came 11 months after UFC 229 against Conor McGregor.
White, for his part, landed somewhere in the middle. “Being the champ, you know, I don’t really expect you to fight three times a year, but twice would be nice,” he said. “What it does is it starts to back up the division. There are lots of guys who would like a shot at the title.”
My take: Prates is right about the calendar and a little cheap with the rest. Lumping Makhachev and Khabib together as one interchangeable Dagestani schedule makes for good sound bites, but Makhachev did put a path on the record. He wants the winner of the contender pile, and Prates and Morales are that pile. Prates doesn’t need to win this argument in interviews. He needs to beat Morales on January 30, and then the Ramadan deadline becomes a question Makhachev has to answer in public.
