Islam Makhachev says he has been dealing with spinal issues since his UFC 330 fight, according to a report that circulated on r/MMA on Monday, October 26. Specifics on the injury, including how severe it is and what treatment he needs, were not included in the material available at press time. The timing matters, though, because it arrives at the tail end of a week in which three very different explanations for his absence were floated in public.
The first domino fell on Friday, October 23, when AgFight reported that Makhachev vs. Carlos Prates was off UFC 336 on January 30. The bout had been set to headline the card. By Saturday, the UFC had moved on, with Championship Rounds reporting that Prates would instead face Michael Morales for the interim welterweight title at UFC 336 in Toronto.
Dana White’s version, shared the same day, was that Makhachev had offered no reason and simply wanted to wait. White said Makhachev told the promotion he didn’t want to fight until after Ramadan, and he was blunt about his frustration. “Islam fights like once a year,” White said. “You can’t hold up divisions like this. You gotta keep moving.”
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Prates took it more personally. In an Instagram callout picked up by Championship Rounds and Dovy on X, he mocked the idea that a fighter who lives as cleanly as Makhachev couldn’t get ready on three months’ notice. “Brother, you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t go to parties, and you can’t get ready for a fight in three months?” Prates said. He then promised to knock out Morales on January 30 and come back “to retire you, coward!”
Makhachev’s own explanation, given on Sunday via pound4padel on Instagram, was about matchmaking logic rather than health. He pointed out that Prates had recently lost to Ian Garry, a fighter Makhachev has already beaten, and that Morales was sitting on the sidelines waiting for a title shot. “Just let them fight and we will figure out who’s the real challenger,” he said.
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So in the span of four days, the public heard that Makhachev wanted to wait out Ramadan, that he didn’t see Prates as the rightful contender, and now that his spine has been bothering him since UFC 330. Those can all be true at once, and honestly, they probably are. Fighters rarely announce injuries while negotiations are live, and a Dagestani camp is about the last place you’d expect someone to volunteer weakness before a deal is done.
My take is that the spinal disclosure should end the “coward” talk, or at least quiet it. You can argue Makhachev’s camp handled the communication badly, letting White frame it as a scheduling whim while the real reason stayed private. That’s a fair criticism. Calling a man scared for not fighting with a bad back is something else entirely. Prates and Morales now get to settle the interim belt on January 30 in Toronto, which is exactly what Makhachev asked for, and the winner gets a champion whose health is the one question nobody can answer from the outside yet.
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