Kamaru Usman wants to take the GOAT debate out behind the barn. According to MMANews, the former UFC welterweight champion came out with a blunt verdict: “There’s No Greatest of All Time.” The thrust of his argument, as it’s been framed, is that a fighter can only be the best of his era, and that stacking up guys from different generations is a fool’s errand.
I’ll give him this much up front. He’s mostly right. I also think he picked a hilarious week to say it, because his own framework puts a big, Dagestani-shaped asterisk on the champion he just went out of his way to defend.
The Part Usman Gets Right
MMA is young enough that the entire history of the sport is a pretty short window. The rules, the training, the athletes and the depth of every division keep changing, and asking who wins between a guy from one generation and a guy from another is a barstool game. Barstool games are fun. I’ve lost entire evenings to them. They aren’t real arguments, though, and Usman deserves credit for saying so out loud when most fighters would rather campaign for their spot on the imaginary Mount Rushmore.
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The best-of-your-era standard has teeth because it can actually be tested. You beat the people who were around when you were around, or you didn’t. That’s a scoreboard, and it’s a lot more honest than a highlight reel and a vibe.
There’s a cynical read too, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind. Usman is 39, according to a list that made the rounds on X this week courtesy of @DovySimuMMA. That same list had Conor McGregor at 38, Alex Pereira at 39, Justin Gaethje at 37, Israel Adesanya at 37 and Alexander Volkanovski at 38. When your whole graduating class is staring down 40, deciding that every era gets its own king is a very comfortable place to land. The @SpinninBackfist account quote-tweeted the list to point out that Joshua Van is 24. Brutal, and very funny.
Usman also took a loss to Dricus du Plessis at a UFC Fight Night at Paycom Center, so he knows better than most what it feels like when the next wave shows up at the door.
Where His Logic Bites Back
If the only crown worth wearing is the one for your own era, then the job description is simple. You fight your era. You take the contenders as they come, especially the dangerous new ones, because that’s the only way the title means anything later.
Which brings us to Islam Makhachev. The welterweight champ held the belt by beating Ian Machado Garry in August and had been pointed toward UFC 336 in Toronto in January for his second defense. Bloody Elbow reported that Makhachev confirmed he was offered Carlos Prates and said no, and that he now doesn’t plan to fight again until after Ramadan. The UFC responded by booking Prates vs. Michael Morales for the interim title in the UFC 336 co-main event. Per Bloody Elbow, Makhachev’s position is that Prates doesn’t deserve the shot and the two top-ranked guys should fight each other first.
Usman has backed Makhachev’s absence, Bloody Elbow noted. So has Colby Covington, which is the single strangest alliance of 2026, and Matt Brown said on MMA Fighting’s The Fighter vs. The Writer that Makhachev has “earned that right.”
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I get the argument. Makhachev is the pound-for-pound No. 1, he’s 35 and he just defended in August. Brown’s point about the UFC needing a clear standard for interim belts is a good one, and I’m with him on that. But if we’re grading champions by Usman’s own rule, the era is Prates and Morales. Those are the new faces of the division. Passing on the guy who’s the clearest threat, and letting him go risk himself against someone else first, is the exact behavior that makes owning your era harder to claim later.
One fan comment that Bloody Elbow pulled from its Facebook page nailed the irony: “Bro wanted to fight Kamaru Usman but these guys have to fight to see who is worthy?” If a 39-year-old Usman counts as a worthy challenge and Prates doesn’t, Makhachev is picking opponents on preference, and the era has nothing to do with it.
The Guy Doing It the Right Way
If you want the template for owning your generation, look one weight class south. Volkanovski, at 38, just beat Movsar Evloev at UFC 333, a much younger contender who represented the next wave at featherweight. And according to Bloody Elbow, he’s now offering to vacate for a lightweight fight he considers “more exciting” than Justin Gaethje. Whatever you think of that pitch, the man keeps saying yes to the hardest available name.
That’s what ruling your era looks like in practice. Usman’s philosophy is sound. It just comes with homework, and the reigning welterweight king is currently skipping class until after Ramadan while Prates and Morales settle it in Toronto in January.
