Islam Makhachev has withdrawn from his welterweight title defense against Carlos Prates at UFC 336, Ag Fight reported Friday. The bout was set to headline the Jan. 30, 2027 pay-per-view at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Roughly 14 weeks out, the UFC now has a No. 1-ranked challenger, a booked building and an empty main event slot.
No reason for the pullout has surfaced. Dana White wasn’t in a sharing mood either. He declined to confirm or deny the report and described it as “interesting,” the kind of answer a promoter gives when he knows something and isn’t ready to say it, or when he just likes watching people refresh their feeds. MiddleEasy framed it as Makhachev reportedly being out of the UFC 336 main event plans, so for now this sits in reported-but-unconfirmed territory until the promotion says something official.
Makhachev is 34 and 29-1. He took the 170-pound belt from Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 322 at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 15, 2025, then defended it against Ian Garry at UFC 330 in August. Since that win he has been publicly grumbling about how many contenders are stacked up waiting for a shot. Somebody upstairs has a sense of humor, because that line just got longer, and the guy at the front of it now has nobody to fight.
That guy is Prates, the top-ranked contender, and what happens to him is anyone’s guess. The UFC hasn’t said whether he stays on the Toronto card, gets a new opponent or gets pushed back. Jesse Holland of MMA Mania, who opened his writeup with a fair “Well, this sucks,” floated the idea of Prates facing No. 3 Michael Morales for an interim title. Holland himself labeled that wishful thinking, so treat it as a columnist’s hope and not a plan. It’s a sensible one, though. An interim belt keeps a pay-per-view headliner intact, keeps the No. 1 contender active and gives the division something to do while the champion’s status gets sorted out.
For anybody who already bet the fight: most books void a wager when the matchup doesn’t happen as booked, so check your ticket before you start yelling at the customer service chat. I’ve done the yelling. It doesn’t speed anything up.
My take: until somebody explains why Makhachev is out, everything else is guessing, and I’m not putting money on a guess wearing a press-release costume. What I will say is that Prates and Morales for an interim strap in Toronto is a better fight to handicap than half the title fights the UFC sold us last year. That’s two contenders who earned the spot, with real paths to victory on both sides. If the UFC books it, I want the number the day it opens. If they instead let Prates sit and wait while Makhachev’s timeline drifts, then down the road somebody will hang a short price on a champion coming back from a long layoff, and you already know how I feel about that bet. Watch for official word on the UFC 336 main event before the card gets any closer to Jan. 30.
