Colby Covington has never met a microphone he didn’t want to set on fire, and this week he pointed the flamethrower at Carlos Prates. In comments Ariel Helwani posted on X on Wednesday, Covington said Prates has no shot against Islam Makhachev. He didn’t stop at calling it a loss. He called it the softest night the champ will ever have.
Here’s how he put it: “Carlos has nothing for him. He’s just a straight striker. That’s gonna be the easiest fight of Makhachev’s career.”
And because Colby never leaves a prediction half-finished, he called the ending too: “I think he takes him down and submits him with like a Kimura or a head-and-arm choke.”
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I think Colby is right about the matchup. And that’s exactly why Prates shouldn’t be next.
Colby’s Read Holds Up
Strip away the Colby of it all (the persona, the trolling, the guy who treats every interview like a heel promo) and the logic holds up. His whole case comes down to one sentence: Prates is a striker, and the champion’s plan is to take him down and finish him on the mat. That’s a fight that ends when the first clean takedown lands. Covington is predicting a man getting folded into a Kimura while the crowd is still finding its seats.
Could Prates make him look silly? Sure. Strikers have embarrassed confident predictions before, and one punch rewrites everything. But this is the boring, obvious read, and Colby just happens to be a guy who makes even boring reads sound like a threat.
It also didn’t help Prates that the most viral clip of him this week had nothing to do with grappling. On Monday, @DovySimuMMA posted video of him stopping in the middle of a pads session to drink a Heineken. It’s hilarious, and I’d watch a full documentary series about it. It is not the footage you want circulating the same week a former title challenger tells the world you’ll get choked out.
Morales Already Said It, Meaner
Here’s what makes Covington’s comments land harder. Michael Morales basically said the same thing three days earlier, and he aimed it at the champ.
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In a message Championship Rounds shared on Sunday, Morales went straight at Makhachev, claiming Islam had called him “way more dangerous” and said he needed one more fight. Then came the shot: “Islam if you prefer Prates because you prefer an easy fighter, I have mine for 2027.”
So now you’ve got Colby calling Prates the easiest fight of Makhachev’s career, and Morales accusing the champion of wanting Prates precisely because he’s the easy one. When the trash talker and the top contender agree, the UFC should be paying attention. Nobody is begging for that title fight. People are bracing for it.
The funny part is that Covington’s take on Morales is a lot less confident. “We gotta see how his takedown defense is,” he said. “We haven’t seen him in any big fights, high-level five-round fights, so we don’t know what to expect from him.”
That’s a fair point, and it’s also the argument for my booking. If we don’t know what Morales is, find out. Morales says Islam’s answer on him and Prates was “let them fight,” and Morales relayed that Prates claims the UFC never offered him that matchup. Morales says he wants it. Two guys who want the belt, both apparently angling for the same shot, and a champion who supposedly endorsed it. Book it as five rounds and you answer Colby’s question about Morales and test whether Prates has anything beyond his hands, all in one night.
The Crowded Hallway
This is getting messy fast, which I love. Ian Garry told Championship Rounds on Monday that he’d agreed to a main event against Morales and the “date is locked in,” and he accused Morales of saying one thing in public and another in DMs. Morales, for his part, ended his message to the division with “F*ck Ian Garry,” which is the most honest sentence anyone wrote all week.
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Then there’s Shavkat Rakhmonov, whom Morales called “the final boss of this division.” Rakhmonov posted a TikTok teasing “19-0 vs 19-0,” and Morales is 19-0. Two undefeated guys flirting on social media is the kind of thing that sells pay-per-views without anybody spending a dollar on marketing.
That’s a lot of hungry, dangerous names, and Covington just handed every one of them a talking point. If Prates gets the call first, the champion looks like he picked the matchup Colby says he’d win with a Kimura. Nobody wants a champion who looks like he’s choosing the easy door.
Makhachev, according to footage @DovySimuMMA posted Tuesday, is in Kyrgyzstan. Wherever he is, the smartest move for everybody is letting Prates and Morales settle it first. If Prates wins that, he makes Colby eat every word. If he doesn’t, Colby gets to say he called it, and honestly, that’s the only outcome that’s already guaranteed.
