Ahead of his welterweight title shot at UFC 330, Ian Machado Garry likened the fight to McGregor's 13-second win over Jose Aldo. Islam Makhachev's manager fired back with a record breakdown, and the underlying reason the comparison falls apart is Makhachev's ground game.
Reviewed by BJJ Gyms · Updated 2026-07-27
Fight details, odds, and record figures per Yahoo Sports and MMA Sucka reporting; verify final tale of the tape closer to fight night.
During a sit-down interview, Garry drew a direct line between his own title shot and one of the most famous moments in UFC history: Conor McGregor needing only 13 seconds to knock out Jose Aldo for the featherweight belt in 2015. Garry's framing was that both fights feature an outspoken challenger from Ireland stepping in against a dominant, heavily favored champion, and that history could repeat itself.
It is an understandable pitch for a fighter trying to sell a pay-per-view-level main event. It is also a comparison that ignores almost everything about how Makhachev actually wins fights.
Makhachev's manager did not let the comparison slide. Speaking publicly, Abdelaziz told Garry flatly that he would 'never be Conor' and should 'just be who you are' instead of borrowing someone else's storyline, while also flagging Garry's 2-1 record over his last three outings as a reason the McGregor talk rings hollow.
It was a sharp response, but not an unfair one. A challenger who has gone 2-1 in his most recent run comparing himself to a fighter who needed 13 seconds to end a title fight invites exactly this kind of pushback, especially from a camp that has heard every version of the underdog pitch before.
The McGregor-Aldo fight was decided by one clean counter left hand in the opening seconds, a pure striking finish with almost no grappling exchange at all. Makhachev's fights rarely look anything like that. His path to victory is built on wrestling entries, control on top, and a heavy dose of jiu-jitsu once the fight hits the mat, the same toolkit that has carried him through a long, largely uninterrupted run at the top of two divisions.
That distinction matters more than the surface-level Irish-underdog narrative. A challenger hoping to shock Makhachev needs a real answer for takedowns and scrambles, not just a highlight-reel right hand. Betting on a 13-second finish against a fighter whose signature skill is dragging opponents into deep water on the ground is a very different bet than the one McGregor cashed against Aldo.
Whatever you think of the trash talk, UFC 330 is another reminder of how much a real grappling base changes a fighter's ceiling in this sport. Champions who can control where a fight happens, standing or on the mat, tend to have far more paths to win than strikers hoping for one clean shot.
If watching this build-up has you curious about developing that kind of control yourself rather than just throwing punches, that is exactly the gap jiu-jitsu training fills. Find a BJJ gym near you and try a class; learning to dictate where a fight takes place is a skill that pays off well beyond the cage.
The Garry-Makhachev build-up is a good excuse to break down why fighters (and grapplers) built around control tend to have longer, more consistent title runs than pure finishers.
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UFC 330 takes place August 15, 2026, at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, headlined by Islam Makhachev's first welterweight title defense against Ian Machado Garry.
He compared it to Conor McGregor's 13-second knockout win over Jose Aldo at UFC 194, framing himself as a similar underdog outsider.
Manager Ali Abdelaziz publicly pushed back, telling Garry he would never be Conor McGregor and citing Garry's 2-1 record over his last three fights as reason to drop the comparison.
Grappling. His fights are typically decided through wrestling, top control, and ground submissions rather than knockouts.