Islam Makhachev’s UFC Record After UFC 330: 17-Win Streak, Welterweight Title and Full Career Timeline

Garry took the center of the cage early and tried to use his four-inch reach and height advantage — 6’3″ with a 74.5-inch reach against Makhachev’s 5’10” and 70 inches — to keep distance and pick shots. It didn’t hold. Round 1 was mostly Makhachev walking him down and pinning him against the fence, not takedowns yet, just positional pressure that ate the clock and forced Garry to work harder to reset than to counter.

Round 2 turned on a single sequence. Makhachev worked a Muay Thai plum, threw knees, then separated and landed a head kick that buckled Garry and put him down. Makhachev followed into side control and spent the rest of the round landing punches and elbows — the round that likely decided the fight on two of the three cards.

Round 3 was Garry’s best. He mixed in kicks to the body, pushed pace on the feet, and stuffed several Makhachev takedown attempts — which is why one judge scored the fight closer, 48-47, than the other two. Rounds 4 and 5 went back to Makhachev’s terms, with full back control for long stretches in the fifth round and a rear-naked choke threat that Garry defended but couldn’t fully escape.

The judges gave Makhachev four rounds on two scorecards and three rounds, by a tighter margin, on the third — consistent with what actually happened in the cage rather than a lopsided shutout. Official scorecards: 49-46, 49-46, 48-47, all for Makhachev.

Did Islam Makhachev break Anderson Silva’s UFC winning-streak record? Yes. His win over Ian Machado Garry was his 17th consecutive UFC victory, one more than Anderson Silva’s 16-fight run, which began in June 2006 and ended when Chris Weidman knocked him out at UFC 162 in July 2013 — a streak that had stood, unmatched, for more than 13 years.

The distinction that matters: this is a UFC-only winning streak, not a professional-MMA winning streak. Makhachev’s pro record before ever stepping into the UFC was 11-0 across regional Russian and M-1 Challenge promotions — those wins aren’t part of the 17-fight UFC count, and folding them in would misstate the record. The streak began on September 17, 2016, with a decision win over Chris Wade, the fight immediately after his lone career loss (Adriano Martins, October 2015), and has run through two weight classes, seven title fights, six finishes and eleven decisions, with zero losses in any promotion during that span.

Lightweight title record, precisely: 1 title win + 4 defenses = 5 total lightweight title-fight victories, a UFC record for the division. That is separate from his lightweight title win count (1) and separate from his overall UFC lightweight record in the division (16-1, including his non-title lightweight bouts).

After clearing the lightweight division’s realistic contenders, Makhachev moved up to welterweight in 2025 to chase two-division champion status. Publicly, he has framed it as pursuing the biggest available fights rather than any specific private reason, and no other motivation has been confirmed by him directly.

The jump from 155 to 170 pounds is real, even for a fighter who reportedly walks well above lightweight between camps. At 5’10” with a 70-inch reach, Makhachev is shorter and shorter-armed than most current welterweights — Garry, at 6’3″ with a 74.5-inch reach, is a clear example. What the move cost him in size, he offset with wrestling: his chain-wrestling and top control translate across weight classes in a way pure boxing or kickboxing skill often doesn’t, since a bigger, stronger opponent still has to solve the same positional problem on the mat.

He won the welterweight title from Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 322 (Nov 15, 2025) by a lopsided 50-45 unanimous decision on every card — his 16th straight UFC win, tying Anderson Silva’s record. Nine months later, the Garry fight extended it to 17 and made the move a genuine, record-validated success rather than a one-off title grab.

What the record does and doesn’t prove: it proves Makhachev has now gone longer without a UFC loss than any fighter in the promotion’s history, across two weight classes rather than Silva’s one. It does not, by itself, settle who’s the greater fighter — Silva’s reign still holds the UFC record for consecutive title defenses (10; Makhachev has 5 across both divisions combined) and one of the most feared finishing rates in UFC history. Editorially: the streak record strengthens Makhachev’s case in the GOAT conversation. It does not close it.

Their careers overlap only at the edges — Khabib retired in October 2020, months before Makhachev reached title contention; the two never fought and never will. Khabib’s number is frozen at a perfect 13-0 because he stopped; Makhachev’s is still climbing and carries one loss from a decade ago. Statistically, Khabib is undefeated in the UFC; Makhachev has the longer active streak and titles in two divisions Khabib never fought in. Comparing “who’s better” requires picking a lens — perfection versus longevity and multi-division success — rather than a single stat, and this is presented as historical context, not a verdict.

St-Pierre retired from the UFC in 2019 with a 26-2 career record, a 13-fight UFC winning streak (the same length as Khabib’s, tied for third-longest all-time behind Makhachev and Silva), and the UFC record for most welterweight title defenses at nine. His 19 welterweight wins remain the most of any fighter in that division’s history — a number Makhachev, at 2-0 in welterweight so far, is nowhere near approaching, and a reminder that “longest win streak” and “most dominant divisional run” are separate records that don’t automatically transfer onto each other.

Southpaw stance, but the fight rarely stays standing long enough for that to matter on its own. His entries come off chain wrestling — repeated, low-risk takedown attempts that don’t need to land clean the first time, because he immediately re-chains into the next attempt, wearing down an opponent’s takedown defense across a round rather than in one shot. Once down, he doesn’t sit in guard; he works for the body lock and mat returns, so a scramble back to the feet often just resets into another takedown attempt seconds later.

Top control is his highest-value real estate: he mixes ground-and-pound with a live submission threat — rear-naked choke, arm triangle, brabo/D’Arce choke, kimura all appear in his UFC finishes — so opponents can’t purely turtle-and-survive without eating a choke attempt. On the feet, his striking is used mostly for setups and distance management rather than as a primary finishing tool, though the UFC 294 and UFC 330 head-kick knockdowns show it’s a live weapon, not decoration.

No fight is officially confirmed. Makhachev has publicly said he believes Carlos Prates is more deserving of the next welterweight title shot than Michael Morales, and has questioned how recently Morales has actually fought. Shavkat Rakhmonov — the only man to beat Garry — is recovering from knee surgery with an expected layoff of nine months or more, which effectively removes him from near-term contention.