Andrew Ravens
Rashad Evans believes Ian Machado Garry’s title challenge against Islam Makhachev at UFC 330 on August 15 in Philadelphia is more competitive than the conventional wisdom suggests, while also identifying a mental tendency that could prove costly when things get difficult inside the cage.
Machado Garry enters the main event at Xfinity Mobile Arena as a sizable underdog against Makhachev, who holds a record of 28-1 in MMA and 17-1 in the UFC and is widely regarded as one of the sport’s most complete fighters. Garry carries a record of 17-1 in MMA and 10-1 in the UFC and is coming off back-to-back wins over Carlos Prates and former champion Belal Muhammad following his lone career defeat to Shavkat Rakhmonov.
Speaking on UFC on Paramount+, Evans said Garry’s qualities as a problem-solver inside the fight make him more dangerous than his underdog status implies.
Ian Machado Garry’s adjustments key in upsetting Islam Makhachev?
“This is a lot better fight than I initially thought,” Evans said. “We know that Islam has morphed into so much more than being that dominant grappler, right? His striking and his kicks, all the aspects of his game is on another level, but there’s something about Ian Garry’s game that I feel is hard to get past. I feel like one thing that Ian does really well is that he makes adjustments really good on the fly. He’s a problem solver, and I feel like that gives a little issue. He’s got some sneaky power, he’s got some accuracy, he’s got some tricky things that he does.”
Evans did not limit his assessment to Garry’s strengths. He pointed to the Rakhmonov loss as a moment that revealed something about how Garry responds when a fight turns against him, and questioned whether that tendency has been fully addressed.
“But I’ll say one thing that doesn’t go in his favor is sometimes you’ll see him in a fight and things are not going his way, and he’ll concede to it in a sense,” Evans said. “The Shavkat fight, it wasn’t going his way, and I seen him making adjustments, but then after that, he was just kind of like content to kind of like, oh well. Maybe that’s the fight that changed him, but I feel like that’s the only thing in his game that I see is going to be a problem facing Makhachev. I mean he has a ground problem to work through, but Garry’s tough. He’s long and he’s scrappy.”
