Colby Covington picked a side this week, and for once it’s the side with the champion on it. As Yahoo Sports reported Friday, Covington defended Islam Makhachev against the growing push to strip him for inactivity, then went further and said neither Carlos Prates nor Michael Morales deserves an interim title fight. Half of that take is correct. The other half falls apart the moment you read what Makhachev himself said the same afternoon.
The strip-him crowd had a rough week
The loudest version of the inactivity complaint came from Brendan Schaub. In a clip posted by HappyPunch, Schaub said Makhachev chose not to fight because of Ramadan and argued, “They should’ve stripped his ass but Dana bends the knee.” He then pinned the problem on the champion’s religion, which is about as far off the technical map as you can get. By Thursday morning Schaub was on X backpedaling, writing that his real point was that “you can’t build stars if they’re not active.” He also admitted the rant was dumb, since by his own words “Islam is already a superstar.” So the guy leading the charge conceded the premise was broken before Covington ever weighed in.
Michael Bisping made the sharper version of the argument. Praising Alexander Volkanovski for staying busy, Bisping took a shot at Makhachev for “fighting once a year and then picking and choosing who he fights and letting contenders face one another.” That one deserves a real answer, because activity is a fair standard for a champion and Bisping is too smart to make the argument lazily.
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The answer showed up Friday. Makhachev, in comments posted by Championship Rounds, said his next fight is one of the last of his career and addressed the two contenders by name: “They say Prates is too dangerous for me and Morales is too good for me.” He followed it by saying he wants to face the best of them. A champion who calls out the two scariest names in the queue is a strange candidate for the picking-and-choosing label. Joshua Van made a similar point, noting that the same people who called Makhachev the GOAT after he beat Ian Garry have flipped on him fast. Van’s right. The goalposts moved and the champion stayed put.
Where Covington misses
Here’s my problem with Covington. An interim belt is a patch for a champion who can’t or won’t defend. Makhachev just told everyone he will, and he told everyone who he wants. So Covington lands on the right conclusion (no interim title) and gets there through the wrong door. You don’t need to argue Prates and Morales are unworthy to kill the interim idea. You only need to point out that the champion has already made one of them his next opponent in spirit.
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And calling them unworthy runs straight into Makhachev’s own framing. The champion described one as too dangerous and the other as too good, and he meant it as a dare, which tells you how seriously his camp takes both. When the guy holding the belt treats your contenders as the real threats, a rival’s dismissal of them reads more like positioning than analysis. Covington has every reason to want the line in front of him shorter, and I’d weigh his opinion of the contenders with that in mind.
Prates, for his part, already did the talking. Responding to Makhachev’s manager Ali Abdelaziz, he said that if Makhachev fights for passion, “he would fight the number 1 contender in January.” Then he raised the stakes: “I will not add anything on his legacy, I will finish his legacy brother.” Confidence is cheap in a callout, but he also named a month, which is more than most contenders bother to do.
What should happen
Skip the interim belt entirely. An interim fight between Prates and Morales would produce a winner, a champion who then has to fight that winner, and a loser who just burned a title-level camp for a placeholder strap. That’s two extra fights of delay for a champion who says he only has a few left. Book Makhachev against Prates, make the winner face Morales, and let the division sort itself out with the real belt on the line.
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My pick if it happens: Makhachev, because a champion this deep into his career who still asks for the most dangerous name usually knows exactly how he plans to take that danger away. But Prates asked for January, Makhachev asked for the best, and the UFC now has two willing parties and a month on the table. Somebody should sign the paper.
