Dana White Says Ian Garry Lacked Killer Instinct Against Makhachev
Dana White has gone back to the fifth round of UFC 330 and said Ian Garry had the fight in front of him and did not take it. On The Diary of a CEO, the UFC chief held up a card that read, “You either have the killer instinct or you don’t,” and used Garry’s welterweight title fight with Islam Makhachev as the example.
“It says you either have the killer instinct or you don’t. And it’s so true,” White said. “So this happened with Ian Garry, you know.” He then walked through the round the way he saw it from outside the cage. “I felt like Ian Garry in that fifth round, you have this opportunity, you’re fighting possibly the greatest fighter of all time.”
White did not dismiss the first four rounds. “And you did a damn good f*cking job for four rounds,” he said. “And, you know, he was battered, his whole right side was busted up, his face was busted up, but he was beating you as far as rounds go.” The official cards still went to the champion. Makhachev won a unanimous decision, 49-46, 49-46 and 48-47, on August 15 at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.
The physical edge was the part White kept returning to. “Now you’re the younger, bigger, rangier fighter. You just fought four incredible rounds. Get out there and put it on.” Garry is 28 and listed at 6-foot-3. Makhachev is 34 and listed at 5-foot-10. White’s argument was that the size and the work already done should have produced a different fifth round.
The complaint was about what Garry did at the start of it. “You go out and start shaking his hands and hugging him and like, do that when they’re strapping the belt on you,” White said. “Show Islam all the love you want when the fight’s over. This is the fifth round. You have five minutes.” He closed the thought on the chance he thinks was missed. “To shock the world and, you know, everything you ever f*cking dreamed of and worked for can happen in this next five minutes, and you didn’t do it.”
This is not a new objection. At the UFC 330 post-fight press conference, White said Garry was talented and that the respect belonged after the bell. “If he had even an ounce of killer instinct, in that fifth round, you don’t come out and hug and shake hands,” he told reporters.
“That sh*t drives me crazy.” He also said Garry should have come out with a flying knee and tried to finish, and that the challenger would watch the fight back and wish he could do it again.
The result still belongs to Makhachev. The win moved him to 29-1, extended his UFC streak to 17, and was the first defense of the welterweight title he won after moving up from lightweight. Garry dropped to 17-2. A competitive scorecard did not change the belt, and White is treating the fifth-round restart as the moment the challenge stopped being a live one.
Garry has spent the weeks since looking for the next big fight rather than answering the killer-instinct line. In September he proposed Saudi Arabia on November 28 to Michael Morales in a direct message, and Morales said he would sign. Morales has since said a January bout is booked against someone else, posted a video that ended with a censored shot at Garry, and then claimed a main-event date with Garry is locked because the UFC sent it. The promotion has not announced that fight.
White’s podcast comments do not book the next opponent. They freeze the criticism on one restart. Four rounds were good enough, in his telling, to leave a battered champion in front of a younger and longer challenger. The fifth, he said, was the round for the finish, not the handshake. The judges gave Makhachev the fight anyway, and the belt stayed where it was when the cage door closed.
