Footage circulating on social media from Saturday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena showed Carlos Prates and Michael Morales, both in attendance for UFC 330, arguing over who should get the next shot at Islam Makhachev while the event was still winding down around them. Morales had weighed in Friday as the official backup for the main event. Prates watched from cageside. Ian Machado Garry beat both men to this title shot, and with his challenge turned away, the queue behind the champion reopened in real time, in the stands.
The champion, notably, named nobody in the cage. Makhachev’s in-octagon interview after the decision stayed away from callouts entirely. The preference came later, on the Paramount+ post-fight show, and when the question arrived he did not dodge it.
“If you ask me today, Shavkat is not fighting, Prates still fighting, still active,” Makhachev said. “Morales also is good, but I don’t remember the last time he fought. If you ask who is more deserving, I think Carlos Prates.”
It is a position he had signalled before fight week, and the logic underneath it is about activity rather than résumé. Both contenders announced themselves on the same November card. At UFC 322, Morales knocked out Sean Brady in the first round to move to 19-0, and Prates finished former champion Leon Edwards on the same night. The difference is what happened next. Prates has fought since, stopping former champion Jack Della Maddalena in the third round of his most recent outing, his third consecutive knockout with a bonus attached to each. Morales has not competed since the Brady finish, nine months and counting, and Makhachev has repeatedly questioned why the unbeaten Ecuadorian stayed on the sidelines rather than taking a fight to harden his case. The champion’s arithmetic is blunt: one man kept the metre running, the other let it idle, and the loss on Prates’s record, a five-round decision to Garry in Kansas City in April 2025, is older news than the two former champions he has knocked out since.
Shavkat Rakhmonov, the name that would otherwise sit atop this conversation, is out of it entirely. The unbeaten Kazakh aggravated a serious knee injury requiring surgery, faces a recovery of at least nine months, and was removed from the rankings in February. The division’s cleanest contender argument is on crutches, which is precisely why the Prates-Morales debate has the floor.
Makhachev, for his part, seems to be enjoying the scramble beneath him. Asked at the post-fight press conference about the two contenders arguing over his belt, the champion offered the promotion a matchmaking suggestion with a smile attached.
“No matter who is them. Maybe let them fight,” he said. “Why they not fight in this card to see who is the number one contender, you know? But it’s okay. I’m happy we have some real contenders in this division. These guys, Morales, Prates, Shavkat, they make me training every day more hard. Because I see this is the real fighters who can give me good fights.”
The detail with scheduling consequences came in the same answer. Makhachev wants his next defence before Ramadan, which falls in February, and he was specific about the window and the reasons.
“We have to fight before Ramadan, 100 percent. January, end of the year, I have to fight,” he said. “I am 34 years old, and I have to fight soon as possible because I’m not cut much weight. I don’t have any big injuries. Just have to maybe double-check my nose.”
That timeline puts the promotion on the clock. A December or January defence means the next challenger gets named within weeks, not months, and the champion has now put his preference on the record twice. Whether the matchmakers follow it is the open variable. Morales’s backup weigh-in on Friday was a signal of proximity, though as ESPN’s post-event analysis noted, backup status sometimes means everything and sometimes means nothing, and their own verdict landed where the champion’s did: Prates is the more compelling fight right now, with a strength of record that survives the Garry loss and, in ESPN’s phrasing, more hype and intrigue around him than nearly anyone in the sport. The alternative reading is Makhachev’s own suggestion made real: book Prates against Morales, let the queue sort itself violently, and hand the winner an undisputed case.
One more wrinkle from Saturday’s undercurrents: backstage footage also showed Garry, minutes removed from his loss, confronting Morales, a reminder that the man who just came up short intends to remain part of this conversation rather than watch it from a distance. At 28, with only Rakhmonov and the record-holder having beaten him, he will be.
The record is broken, the belt is defended, and the division’s next chapter is already arguing with itself in public. The champion has told everyone his answer and his deadline. The promotion’s move now.
