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Mailbag: Can Islam Makhachev surpass Khabib Nurmagomedov in the lightweight pantheon at UFC 311?

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Is Islam Makhachev close to becoming the lightweight GOAT? (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)

What would it take for UFC lightweight champ Islam Makhachev to be remembered as an even greater fighter than his coach and friend Khabib Nurmagomedov? Is it possible he might step into that role as soon as Saturday night’s UFC 311 main event? And how many clones of yourself would you need in order to beat Francis Ngannou?

That and other pressing questions in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @benfowlkes.bsky.social.

@shadore66: When does the consensus happen that Islam is better than Khabib? Now, after Sunday, or never?

It’s really hard to do better than retiring undefeated with the belt around your waist. That’s the sort of thing that grabs ahold of people’s imaginations. If we never saw you get beat, we don’t even really know for sure that it’s possible.

Islam Makhachev will never have that. He already has that one loss to Adriano Martins in his second UFC fight back in 2015. But where he could pull ahead of Khabib Nurmagomedov is in longevity and overall career ambition.

If Makhachev beats Arman Tsarukyan in the UFC 311 main event, he’ll have broken Nurmagomedov’s record of three straight UFC lightweight title defenses (which the Hall of Famer owns alongside B.J. Penn, Frankie Edgar and Benson Henderson). That alone probably doesn’t supplant his coach in people’s minds, but how about if he wins five or six or seven straight title fights? What if he goes up a division and beats a champion there? The downside of retiring undefeated in your prime is we’ll always feel like we never got to see you push it to the absolute limit. If Makhachev is willing to take those risks — and if he wins — that’s when he’ll pull into the lead.

@justlikelasagna: 2 title fights. 4 great fighters. But 0 for 4 in the English as a first language category. How much will that effect the publics interest in this card?

Not much. For one thing, just because they aren’t native speakers doesn’t mean they can’t or don’t communicate in English. I interviewed both Makhachev and Umar Nurmagomedov this past week, and they both spoke English the entire time with zero help and no issues.

But also, let’s not act like there aren’t tons of fighters on the UFC roster who, despite having grown up speaking the King’s English, are still of little interest to fans. This is a business driven by individuals and personalities, that is true, but simply speaking in our native tongue does not necessarily mean we’ll end up liking you or the words that come out of your face. I feel like Colby Covington’s career has taught us this, if little else.

Fedor Emelianenko didn’t speak English. If anything, this only contributed to his air of inscrutable badassery. Anderson Silva spoke very little English, and only reluctantly. Still, we were fascinated by him. Alex Pereira hardly speaks at all, in any language, and he’s one of the biggest stars out there right now. Even Khabib, whose English improved with impressive speed during his time in the UFC, got an awful lot of mileage out of stuff like “smesh him” and “send location.” Some communication is just universal.

@jmprobus: Give me your best guess as to how the main card plays out, at 311, this weekend.

I made my UFC 311 picks along with the rest of the Uncrowned staff, but the slightly expanded version looks something like this:

  • Makhachev beats Arman Tsarukyan by decision or late stoppage after gradually taking over in a fight that starts close but doesn’t stay that way for long.

  • Merab Dvalishvili outworks and outpaces a game Umar Nurmagomedov in a y’all-musta-forgot type effort to shame anyone who had him as the underdog here.

  • Jamahal Hill pieces up Jiri Prochazka, who keeps coming but is ultimately knocked out.

  • Renato Moicano gets his grapple on and beats Beneil Dariush with a late submission or TKO stoppage due to ground-and-pound.

  • Kevin Holland shows Reinier de Ridder there are levels to this game.

@aokiplata.bsky.social: I know there’s been tons of stupidly run fight promotions in MMA history. But what the hell is going on with PFL these days???

I don’t know, but I do know it’s not going great. We’ve all heard a lot of PFL news in the last few weeks, none of it very cheerful. I think MMA needs a strong competitor to the UFC. I think fighters and fans both benefit from it. But right now it feels like PFL can’t get out of its own way.

It’s got to be Michael Chandler vs. Eddie Alvarez. The first one. The wild, bloody brawl that had the misfortune of taking place on the very same night as the wild, bloody brawl between Dan Henderson and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 139. I remember being at that UFC event and looking over at media members who had the Chandler-Alvarez fight streaming on their laptops. This was at a time when Bellator did not typically win many battles for our attention when its opposition was the UFC. Chandler and Alvarez combined for the kind of fight that forced us, at least for that one night, to rethink that.

@SlyBoston: Imagination time. Is there any techniques, like the explosion of the calf kick, that have yet to utilized widely that could be a noticeable game changer? Downward elbow to the hip bone? Eye brow choke? Steel cup arm bars? Or have we discovered them all?

I predict a future in which Dricus du Plessis’ vicious headbutt to the hip is a technique taught in every gym and feared by every fighter.

@JedKMeshew: If you could clone yourself infinitely, how many of them would it take to defeat a prime Francis Ngannou in a fight, one at a time.

For the parameters of this hypothetical, I’m assuming that Ngannou has to fight the clones one right after another, immediately, with zero breaks between bouts. He just knocks the head off one Ben clone, walks back to his corner, and the next clone steps in right away, ready to die.

In that scenario, what you’re really asking me is how many times can Ngannou swing his fists in a malicious arc before he becomes too tired to lift his arms or move his feet, at which point one of my clones (who I assume is created with all my jiu-jitsu acumen and raw athleticism already in him) can hit the arm drag to ankle pick to arm triangle combo that was always my favorite.

I’m going to say I can get it done within 50 clones. But a lot is going to depend on the first 40 or so clones being ready and willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. They need to understand that their job is to tire him out — not to try to beat him. They also need to understand that they will die. We will never forget their sacrifice. They will share in the glory with the knowledge that, while Ben clone No. 50 might have been the one to get his hand raised, this was a victory we all achieved together.

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