Makhachev vs Machado Garry: 61 percent, or 77?
The market prices Islam Makhachev at 77 percent to beat Ian Machado Garry at UFC 330. Our Power Index says 61. The takedown numbers explain the gap.
The consensus sportsbook price on UFC 330 has Islam Makhachev at -344 to keep the welterweight title against Ian Machado Garry. That is an implied 77 percent.
Our Power Index has it at 61.
Sixteen points of daylight between the market and a rating system is a lot, and in a title fight it is worth asking which side is looking at something the other is not. (That 61 comes from our Power Index, a results-based rating, not our AI model. Model probabilities are generated inside the 48 hour window before an event, so they will appear on the event page around the 13th, and they lead once they exist.)
The case for 77 percent
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Makhachev is 28-1. The one is Adriano Martins, October 3, 2015, and nobody has beaten him in the ten years and sixteen UFC fights since.
He tops our Power Index board among active UFC fighters, 47 points clear of second place, but the numbers underneath the rating are the least fashionable and most decisive set in the sport:
- 91 percent takedown defense, across 18 UFC fights
- 3.10 takedowns landed per fifteen minutes
- 2.45 significant strikes landed per minute at 58 percent accuracy
- 61 percent striking defense
He is not a volume striker and does not need to be. His last five wins are a unanimous decision over Jack Della Maddalena to take this belt, a first round submission of Renato Moicano, a fifth round submission of Dustin Poirier, a first round knockout of Alexander Volkanovski, and a five round decision over the same Volkanovski. That is a champion who wins by whichever route is open.
The case for 61 percent
Photo: Oisinvg / CC BY-SA 4.0
Garry is 17-1, 10-1 in the UFC, and the loss is a five round decision to Shavkat Rakhmonov in December 2024. Since then he has beaten Carlos Prates over five rounds and Belal Muhammad over three. Those are the No. 2 and No. 7 welterweights on the current official board, beaten back to back.
His own Power Index sits at a career high, 79 points behind the champion, and the rating only counts results against rated opposition. Garry's recent opposition has been about as good as the division has to offer without holding the belt.
The number that matters most on Saturday is his takedown defense: 80 percent across 11 UFC fights. He is also the bigger man, six foot three against Makhachev's five foot ten, with a 74 inch reach, and he lands 4.78 significant strikes per minute at 54 percent accuracy against Makhachev's 2.45.
The obvious caution: 80 percent takedown defense against 3.10 takedowns per fifteen minutes is not the same test as 80 percent against a normal welterweight, and Makhachev's 91 percent means Garry's own takedown attempts (0.92 per fifteen minutes, which is barely an attempt at all) are not a realistic escape hatch.
What Garry has not done
Here is the part that the ranking does not show you. Garry's last six fights, in order: unanimous decision, unanimous decision, unanimous decision (the loss), unanimous decision, split decision, unanimous decision. His last finish was a first round knockout of Daniel Rodriguez on May 13, 2023.
Eleven UFC fights, one post-fight bonus. Compare that to Makhachev's six, or to what the division's other contenders have been doing to their opponents.
That is not a knock on his skill, it is a statement about his path to victory. Garry wins rounds. To beat Makhachev he has to win at least three of five while defending takedowns from the best positional grappler in the sport, and he has to do it without a proven ability to end a fight when the rounds get close. Close rounds against a champion have a way of going one direction, and Garry's last six fights say he will be living in close rounds.
Where the division actually stands
The official welterweight board behind the champion reads: Machado Garry, Prates, Michael Morales, Della Maddalena, Gabriel Bonfim, Sean Brady, Muhammad, Leon Edwards, Kamaru Usman, Joaquin Buckley.
That is a queue with three genuine problems in it. Morales is undefeated. Prates loses only to Garry. Della Maddalena held this belt nine months ago. And Uros Medic, who sits on our 12 month Power Index risers board at plus 90 points, has climbed to No. 10 on our meta board after headlining in Belgrade.
Makhachev moved up a weight class and took the strap on his first attempt. The interesting question is not whether he beats Garry, which both the market and our rating expect. It is how many of those ten he has to get through before the sport decides the welterweight title is his the way the lightweight title was, and how many of his prime years that costs him at a size he was not built for.
Sixty one percent, or seventy seven. Philadelphia settles the first part on August 15.