Ian Machado Garry isn’t sitting out the rest of 2026. Ariel Helwani reported Monday that the Irish welterweight already has his next UFC fight booked. According to Championship Rounds, which relayed the report on X, Helwani said Garry has a bout coming up “in about a month.”
That’s the whole package for now. Helwani didn’t name an opponent, an event or an exact date, only the rough timeline. If the math holds, that puts Garry somewhere in the back half of November. A thread on r/MMA noted that Helwani made the comments in the same segment where he floated Michael Morales vs. Mike Malott.
Garry’s last appearance was a title fight against welterweight champion Islam Makhachev, and it didn’t go his way. Bloody Elbow covered the newly announced UFC 336 in Toronto on Jan. 30, 2027, and framed Garry’s next outing as a bounce-back fight. The outlet pitched Sean Brady as the opponent and argued that facing a wrestler like Brady would give Garry a chance to fix the holes he showed against Makhachev. That was the outlet’s suggestion, not a booking. If Helwani’s timeline is right, Garry fights well before Toronto anyway.
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The loss doesn’t wipe out the résumé. According to numbers posted by Michael Carroll, Garry has nine UFC welterweight wins since 2022, the most in the division over that stretch. Jack Della Maddalena and Malott are tied behind him at eight.
He’s also been working other people’s fights. On Friday, Garry was in Lucas “Bomba”’s corner alongside Charles Oliveira at Bison Kombat 10, where Bomba won a decision on UFC Fight Pass.
The division around him isn’t waiting either. Malott knocked out Joaquin Buckley with a knee at 2:32 of Round 2 in Saturday’s UFC Edmonton main event. It was his fifth straight win and moved him to 15-2-1 overall and 8-1 in the UFC. Buckley, now 22-9, has lost three in a row. Bloody Elbow expects Makhachev’s next defense to come against Carlos Prates, and Morales and Shavkat Rakhmonov have been linked to each other. Malott has said he wants Della Maddalena.
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My take: good. A guy coming off a title loss could easily sit back and angle for a spot in Toronto while half the top 10 gets penciled into fantasy brackets for January. Garry is taking a fight a month out instead, and I’ll always respect the fighter who wants the next one now. The only thing missing is the name across from him. If it turns out to be Brady, Garry gets the exact wrestling test everyone says he failed, with no time to hide from it.
