Ian Machado Garry says the Michael Morales fight has a date. In a Monday Instagram post, Garry claimed he has agreed to headline against the undefeated Ecuadorian and that the UFC has already picked when. “I’ve said YES. The date is locked in,” he wrote, and he tagged it as a main event in case anybody missed the billing. An AOL report framed the claim as coming despite a denial that the bout was actually agreed upon. Nothing official has been announced, and no date has been made public.
Garry didn’t stop at the announcement. He went after Morales for what he sees as a gap between the public posturing and the private conversation. “You’re making excuses already. UFC sent the date. I dm’d you myself. You make it all public but behind the scenes I’m getting a different message,” Garry wrote. Then he went for the soft spot: “How long has it been since he’s fought?”
This all started Sunday, when Morales dropped a video on social media running through the entire top of the 170-pound division. He told champion Islam Makhachev there should be “no more excuses” after the Carlos Prates question gets settled. He offered Prates a fight and pitched it as “Deadpool vs. Spider-Man.” He named Shavkat Rakhmonov “the final boss of this division” as his 2027 plan. He saved Garry for last, and kept it short. “Oh, I almost forgot about you,” Morales said. “F*ck you, Ian Garry.”
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The resumes explain the heat. Morales is 7-0 in the UFC, 19-0 overall, and his last three fights were first-round knockouts of Sean Brady, Gilbert Burns and Neil Magny. He’s 27. He also hasn’t fought at all in 2026, and MMA Fighting noted he’s closing in on a full year out, with a crowded schedule that could push his return into 2027. In the meantime, Prates knocked out former champion Jack Della Maddalena in May and appears to be next in line for Makhachev.
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Garry, for his part, is coming off a unanimous decision loss to Makhachev at UFC 330 in August, and he has promised to fight his way back to another shot. Morales was the official backup for that title fight and made weight for it, so these two have already been circling each other for months. Rakhmonov, sidelined since December 2024, got in on the fun too, posting “19-0 vs 19-0” on TikTok.
Somebody is lying here, and I’d love to see the inbox. Garry going public with “UFC sent the date” is a power move, because now Morales either confirms it or looks like the guy who talks big on camera and goes quiet in the DMs. And I get Morales’s math. He wants Makhachev or Prates, and a fight with a guy fresh off a title loss can only cost him. But you don’t get to call out the scariest names in the division in the same video where you curse out the one ranked dude actually volunteering. If that date is real, Morales should take it, because nobody stays in title talk forever on knockouts from last year.
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