On Aug. 15 in Philadelphia, Islam Makhachev warmed up backstage at UFC 330, walked out, and spent five rounds taking Ian Machado Garry apart for a unanimous decision. That was his first defense at 170 pounds, nine months after he beat Jack Della Maddalena at Madison Square Garden to become a two-division champion. Roughly 10 weeks later, the UFC announced on the UFC 333 broadcast that Carlos Prates and Michael Morales would fight for an interim welterweight title at UFC 336 in Toronto on Jan. 30.
An interim belt exists for a champion who can’t fight. Makhachev can fight, he wants to fight, and he has said he’ll face the winner after Ramadan. The UFC built a second belt anyway, and the only thing it really measures is how annoyed Dana White is.
The calendar the UFC chose to ignore
Ramadan is expected to begin Feb. 7. Makhachev had initially said he wanted to fight before the fasting month, and the UFC’s answer was a Jan. 30 date. Think about what that asks of a man from Makhachkala who treats his faith as a fixed point in his year. It asks for a full camp through December and January, a weight cut, five rounds against the No. 1 contender, and then a recovery that runs straight into a month of fasting. White, according to Sports Illustrated’s reporting, strongly disagrees with Makhachev’s reasoning about Ramadan. That’s his right as a promoter. Punishing a champion for it with a meaningless belt is something else.
The timeline is not long. Yahoo’s analysis put Makhachev’s possible return as early as May, with Ramadan wrapping around the beginning of March. So the UFC is crowning an interim champion in January for a title holder who could be back in the cage before summer. Brown, the retired welterweight, said it bluntly on MMA Fighting’s The Fighter vs. The Writer: “The interim title’s not going to mean anything.”
The matchmaking argument is Makhachev’s, and he’s right
Makhachev’s other objection was about the contender himself. Machado Garry beat Prates in April 2025, and Makhachev wrote on X that Garry chased Prates “around the Octagon for five rounds.” Makhachev beat the man who beat Prates. Morales sits at 19-0 (7-0 UFC) and ranked No. 3, but per MMA Mania he didn’t throw a punch in 2025, and Prates has competed just once since last year. Asking those two to settle it first is basic, sensible matchmaking.
It’s also consistent. After knocking out Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 294, Makhachev said Justin Gaethje and Charles Oliveira should fight each other first. Both then lost their next fights at UFC 300, Gaethje to Max Holloway and Oliveira to Arman Tsarukyan by split decision. Henry Cejudo made exactly this point on his Pound 4 Pound podcast with Kamaru Usman, saying the idea was “already premeditated with Islam since the beginning if you think about it.” He also called Prates vs. Morales a “pay-per-view main event,” which tells you the fight sells without any gold attached to it.
The best case against Islam
The strongest counter is his own quote. Before the Volkanovski rematch, when he took the fight on short notice after Oliveira got hurt, Makhachev said: “What does this title represent? It means you’re the best in the world and if you’re the best in the world, it doesn’t matter who is standing across from you. What do I say? No? Never. Let’s do this.” White liked it enough to have it put on the walls of the Apex and the Performance Institute. Makhachev posted it again on Jan. 17, 2025, the day before he submitted Renato Moicano with a D’Arce choke at 4:05 of Round 1 at UFC 311. Fans on X have spent the week asking for those walls to be repainted.
Read the quote again, though. It’s about who stands across from him, and Makhachev has already agreed to fight whoever wins in Toronto, Prates or Morales. He declined a date that collided with Ramadan, plus an opponent coming off a loss to the guy he just beat. He did not turn down an opponent out of fear. A man with a record run of consecutive wins dating to October 2015, now 29-1, has earned some say over the calendar. Brown said as much: “He’s earned that right to pick when he fights.”
A belt as a message
What makes this ugly is the inconsistency. Carlos Ulberg won the light heavyweight title in February 2026 and tore his ACL doing it. That is the textbook case for an interim title, and Yahoo noted there’s been nothing but crickets at 205 pounds. Meanwhile, a healthy welterweight champion with a clear return window gets an interim belt stapled to the co-main event under Joshua Van vs. Manel Kape.
White suggested Makhachev could end up holding up the division, 11 months into his reign. Brown read the move more honestly, saying on the show that it felt like the UFC trying to punch Islam in the gut. It feels that way because it is that way. The belt adds no clarity to the division, since everyone watching on Jan. 30 already knows the winner gets Makhachev. What it adds is leverage, a second champion to wave around if the first one keeps saying no.
Prates and Morales will probably deliver a knockout in Toronto. Then sometime after Ramadan, Makhachev will walk out against the winner, and the UFC will market it as a unification bout, a fight between a real champion and the belt it invented to needle him.
