Ian Machado Garry says he does not care that his personality rubs people the wrong way
Ian Machado Garry knows he’s ruffled some feathers in the MMA community—he just doesn’t care.
On Saturday, Garry challenges Islam Makhachev for the welterweight title in the main event of UFC 330. It’s Garry’s first title fight, and ahead of the bout, “The Future” has been making the media rounds to promote the event. While Garry has rubbed a portion of the MMA fanbase the wrong way since he broke into prominence, this latest media tour may have stirred the hornet’s nest more than ever when he suggested that women should rule the world.
In response to his comments, several prominent MMA figures have ripped Garry for his personality and media appearances, including Makhachev, who said that Garry looks bad in his interviews and like he’s trying to be a bad guy . But Garry doesn’t care.
“I couldn’t care less,” Garry told the Spinning Backfist MMA Show . “Ahead of my fight with Belal Muhammad in Qatar, I walked out to boos. Go back and listen to the audio 30 seconds into the fight. ‘Let’s go, Garry! Let’s go!’ This sport is a pantomime. I couldn’t care less what people think of me. What I care about is becoming the champion of the world and proving that I was right. That the dream I had as a 16-year-old growing up in Dublin, Ireland, I fulfill that dream.
“What anyone else thinks about me, it’s irrelevant. My little boy is going to be front row when I win that belt. I couldn’t care what anyone else on this planet has to say about me or thinks about me. I want to see his smile. I want to see him and my wife. I want to give him the biggest cuddle I possibly can, and say, ‘Daddy did it!’ That’s all that matters to me.”
Garry has his opportunity to do just that on Saturday, but it’s a tall task in front of him.
Makhachev is the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world right now, and is quickly building a résumé to put him among the all-time greats. And as he heads into the biggest fight of his life, Garry is taking that same unconcerned approach when it comes to his preparation — this fight isn’t about what Makhachev can do, but what he will do.
“This fight camp, I have been so focused on me and everything I want to do to be the best in the world,” Garry said. “Not what Islam can do. I know Islam. I know Islam’s route to victory. I know what he has to do to try and get his hand raised this fight. It’s very simple. What I want to do is be the best version of me, so I can cause him the most frustration, the most irritation, and I can have fun.”
UFC 330 takes place this Saturday at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.
The division he is being tested in
The personality is the story being written. The fight is at 170 pounds, and the archive has a firm view of what that weight tends to produce.
Across 80,119 archived bouts contested by fighters listed at welterweight:
| Welterweight bouts | Share |
|---|---|
| Ended by KO or TKO | 36.9% |
| Ended by submission | 34.4% |
| Went to the judges | 25.4% |
Only middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight finish on strikes more often. Welterweight sits at the point on the ladder where fighters are still fast enough to land cleanly and heavy enough for it to matter — three-quarters of its fights end before the scorecards.
For a first title challenge that is the relevant number, and it cuts against the noise. Whatever a media tour generates, the division does not reward it: a quarter of welterweight fights reach a decision, which means the overwhelming likelihood is that this one is settled decisively, one way or the other, by someone getting finished.
The champion's own claim to greatness rests on a streak the archive puts in context: 209 fighters in the entire record have won fifteen in a row, and only 40 have reached twenty.
Method: figures drawn from the MMAHIT fight archive of 1,049,038 recorded bouts across 347,296 fighters, events dated December 1963 to May 2026. Each bout is stored once per corner and has been de-duplicated. Draws and no-contests are excluded from win-rate calculations. Division is taken from the weight class recorded on each fighter's profile rather than the contracted weight of the individual bout.
