Islam Makhachev spent part of this weekend far from any cage. Sadyr Japarov, the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, met with the UFC champion, and the footage reached fans through an unexpected press office. Valentina Shevchenko shared the clip on X early Sunday, Oct. 11, with a short caption announcing that the president had met with “UFC champion Islam Makhachev!”
That caption is close to everything the post offers. Shevchenko didn’t say what was discussed, who else was in the room or what brought Makhachev to the meeting. None of the material available to us included a statement from Japarov’s office or from Makhachev’s team. So the record is small and specific: a sitting head of state, a UFC champion, and one of the most decorated women in the sport sharing it with her followers in the early hours of a Sunday.
The reception caps a loud few days around Makhachev. On Oct. 9, Carlos Prates called him out, and a clip posted by Championship Rounds on X showed the Brazilian describing himself as “wrestling’s worst nightmare.” Dovy, the MMA content creator who posted his own version of the video, labeled it “Drunk Carlos Prates calls out Islam Makhachev.” That description is Dovy’s. The posts don’t establish anything beyond it, and Prates hasn’t addressed it in any of the material we have.
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Makhachev wasn’t silent that night either. Less than an hour after the Prates clip started circulating, Dovy posted that Makhachev had commented on Volk’s video. The post doesn’t spell out what Makhachev wrote or which video he was responding to, so we won’t guess at the content.
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What the sources don’t contain is a booking. Nothing in the reporting so far points to a confirmed opponent, a date or a venue for Makhachev’s next appearance, and the Prates callout remains just that, a callout made into a camera.
My take: Prates picked a good line. “Wrestling’s worst nightmare” is the kind of phrase that gets clipped and reposted within minutes, which is exactly what happened. But look at where Makhachev was two days later. He was being received by a president, with a fellow champion filming the moment, and the gap between those two scenes says a lot about who holds the leverage. Makhachev doesn’t need to answer anyone on a microphone. If Prates wants that fight, he’ll have to build a case the matchmakers can’t ignore, and a viral clip from a night Dovy is calling a drunk one is a thin first brick. The next real signal will be whether Makhachev ever says Prates’ name out loud, because so far the only thing he has commented on publicly is Volk.
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