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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 15: (L-R) Jack Della Maddalena of Australia wrestles against Islam Makhachev of Russia in the UFC welterweight championship fight during the UFC 322 event at Madison Square Garden on November 15, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
At UFC 330, Ian Machado Garry will be the first welterweight to test Islam Makhachev since the Dagestani wrestler took the 170 pound belt off Jack Della Maddalena in November 2025. That was widely considered to be a pretty boring fight — Makhachev took Della Maddalena down and kept him there for 25 minutes. Few risks were taken, and Islam seemed content to cruise to his second UFC world title.
In a new podcast interview with High Performance, Garry revealed Della Maddalena’s fate would be his worst case scenario on August 15th when he faces Makhachev in the cage.
“Being held down for twenty five minutes and just having a boring fight,” Garry said. “He’s a phenomenal wrestler, a phenomenal grappler. And if you allow him the ability to stay on top and utilize his grappling and his wrestling, he can suffocate you and just lie on you like a weighted blanket, and you just find it so hard to move.”
“And I’m like, that’s not fun for anyone. It’s not fun for me. It shouldn’t be fun for him, and it’s definitely not fun for anyone watching. And he did that. He did exactly that to win the world title fight. And I feel like that’s the worst case scenario.”
Garry went on to say that getting finished is one thing but getting completely nullified in a non-fight was another.
“The best in the world lose fights by getting knocked out or getting submitted,” he argued. “In this sport, in MMA, winning and losing isn’t like boxing. It’s a very recency-biased sport. They love you. They hate you. You win. You lose. Oh, he won again. We all love him again. We’ve forgotten about loss. And I feel like far too many fighters focus on not losing as opposed to winning.”
“Like, just focus on winning,” he concluded. “That’s all you need to do. If I go out there and fight, and he out-skilled me, and he’s better than me, but I fought him as hard as I could? I can leave that octagon proud that I did everything I possibly could to win that fight.”
Getting pinned for five rounds is a very real concern for Garry, but he sounded fully confident in his ability to keep from getting JDM’d.
“It’s not gonna happen,” he declared. “Because I’m too good. I’m just too good. I just I feel like I’ve been put on this earth to fight, and there’s just a divine guidance that when I get in that octagon, everything just goes my way. Every time. Every time. I don’t know what it is, how it works. I don’t care to question it. I just enjoy it.”
We’ll see how that divine guidance helps “The Future” when he faces off with Makhachev in the main event of UFC 330.
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