Islam Makhachev has won seven championship fights across two weight classes, and the one he keeps putting back on the TV is the night he got split open in Newark.
In an interview with Red Corner MMA, the host floated his UFC 322 win over Jack Della Maddalena, the one that made him a two-division champ, as the best fight of his career. Makhachev passed on that and went straight to Dustin Poirier.
“The biggest emotions? Well, winning the fight was very emotional,” Makhachev said. “But I keep watching the Poirier fight. As I said, we fought as if it was a street fight. Plus, I managed to finish him. I really enjoyed the fight.”
That fight was UFC 302 on June 1, 2024, at the Prudential Center, a lightweight title defense where Poirier showed up as a heavy underdog on what was his third crack at the 155-pound belt after losses to Khabib Nurmagomedov and Charles Oliveira. Poirier stopped 11 of Makhachev’s 16 takedown attempts, which held the most feared wrestler in the division to five completions. He also landed an elbow that opened Makhachev’s forehead, the first time anyone had seen the Dagestani badly bloodied in the Octagon. Makhachev still held the statistical edge and closed it with a D’Arce choke in Round 5.
This isn’t new territory for him. Before he defended the lightweight belt against Renato Moicano at UFC 311 in January 2025, Makhachev told Demetrious Johnson on a podcast that he’d rewatched the Poirier fight several times and credited Poirier’s takedown defense homework. He’s had other tough nights, including his first meeting with Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 284 and his fight with Ian Garry at UFC 330, but those played out as technical chess matches more than brawls.
The pullout
The nostalgia comes at an awkward time. Makhachev, 34 and now the welterweight champion, was set to headline UFC 336 on January 30 in Canada against Carlos Prates. Reports surfaced in late October that he’d withdrawn. The UFC moved on with Prates vs. Michael Morales for the interim 170-pound title in the co-main event, and Joshua Van defending his belt against Manel Kape takes the top spot.
Makhachev told Pound 4 Padel how he sees it: “Yes, Prates and Morales will fight, determine who is the true worthy contender, and I will fight the winner.”
Prates didn’t take it quietly and said Makhachev “chickened out.” Because the fight was never officially announced, there was some fog over whether Makhachev had actually committed. Dana White cleared it up at a media scrum. “Yeah, it was verbally agreed to,” White said.
Sal’s take
I respect a champion who picks the fight where he looked human over the one where he looked like a god. That’s an honest answer, and the numbers back it up. Poirier, a guy most books had as a long shot, made Makhachev’s takedown game hit at 31% and nearly cashed one of the better underdog tickets of 2024. Every live dog I’ve ever loved looked a lot like Poirier that night. The irony is that the champ who loves a street fight just stepped out of one with Prates, a striker who would happily turn any fight into exactly that kind of mess. So Makhachev gets to watch from home on January 30 while Prates and Morales bleed for the right to face him, and the winner gets a champion who’ll have plenty of tape to study, including the Poirier fight he already can’t stop watching.
