Colby Covington Says Carlos Prates Has No Chance Against Islam Makhachev
Colby Covington does not see a welterweight title fight in Carlos Prates. Asked on Ariel Helwani’s show whether Prates could beat Islam Makhachev, the former interim champion shut it down in one breath.
“No, no, no chance, bro. Carlos has nothing for him. He’s just a straight striker,” Covington said. “That’s going to be the easiest fight of Makachev’s career.”
He already had the finish picked out. “He’s going to take him down. I think he takes him down and submits him with like a kimura or something, or a head and arm choke.”
The UFC has not booked that match. Makhachev is the welterweight champion, and his first defense already happened. He beat Ian Machado Garry over five rounds on August 15 at UFC 330 in Philadelphia and stretched his UFC winning streak to 17.
Prates is the name sitting behind that result in more than one ranking, including No. 2 on Combat Press’s September list, which is why Helwani asked.
Prates earned the conversation. He stopped Leon Edwards in the second round at UFC 322 in November, then took the welterweight belt off Jack Della Maddalena on May 2 with a third-round TKO from leg kicks and elbows.
Sherdog lists him at 24-7, with 19 of the wins by knockout or TKO. The loss that still sits on the page is to Machado Garry, the same man Makhachev just decisioned.
Covington treated the striking record as the problem. A kimura or a head-and-arm choke is his read on a fighter who has finished most of his wins standing, and who has been submitted three times in seven losses. He did not argue that Prates can hurt people. He argued that Makhachev will not let the fight stay there.
Helwani moved to the other unbeaten name in the division. Michael Morales is 19-0, with first-round knockouts of Gilbert Burns and Sean Brady, the second of those on the same UFC 322 card as Prates’s win over Edwards. Covington would not write him off the way he wrote off Prates.
“Michael Morales? Yeah, we got to see. I mean, we got to see how his takedown defense is,” Covington said. “We haven’t seen him in any big fights, you know, high-level five-round fights, so we don’t know what to expect from him.”
He used Prates as the comparison, and then turned it into a condition.
“We know Carlos can go five rounds. He does get a little tired, you know. I mean, it kind of attributes to having a huge, a terrible habit, you know, smoking cigarettes. He needs to quit that if he ever wants to be a legitimate champion.”
“But I don’t know what Morales, you know. I think he’s still improving, and there’s still a lot to be seen with that guy,” Covington said.
That split is the useful part of the interview. Covington, who has spent the fall defending a Real American Freestyle cruiserweight title and preparing for Khamzat Chimaev on November 14 in Abu Dhabi, is not in this eliminator.
He is ranking the two men most often attached to Makhachev’s next defense, and he is doing it on wrestling. Prates, in his view, is a striker who gets taken down and finished. Morales is a finisher whose takedown defense has not been tested over 25 minutes.
Neither fight is on a poster. The rest of the 2026 numbered cards already have main events, so a Makhachev defense against either man is a 2027 problem, with January the cleanest window before Ramadan.
Until the UFC picks one, Covington’s call stands as a prediction, not a result. He has Prates submitted. He has Morales still unsolved.
