Matt Brown Rips UFC Over Makhachev Interim Title: 'We Don't Need This'

Islam Makhachev turned down a January date with Carlos Prates, so the UFC is doing what it increasingly does when a champion says no: strapping an interim belt around the division. Prates, the No. 2 welterweight at 24-7 with 19 knockouts, now meets Michael Morales at UFC 336, with that vacant interim title on the line. The problem, as Matt Brown sees it, is that there's nothing vacant about the welterweight throne. Makhachev defended it in August with a unanimous-decision win over Ian Machado Garry.

That's the crux of Brown's complaint on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. The champ has been sidelined for two months. Two months. And UFC 336 sits barely five months removed from his last title defense. Brown says he'd rather watch Makhachev run through both Prates and Morales than see the promotion cook up a belt that, in his words, won't mean anything.

Brown Defends the Champ

Here's the twist: Brown isn't mad at Makhachev. He thinks the champion has earned the right to be selective after everything he's accomplished, and he refuses to frame it as ducking. Makhachev has reportedly said he'll happily face the Prates-Morales winner once Ramadan wraps, which lines up with a spring or summer return. To Brown, that's just how combat sports works — once you reach the top, you get to be choosy about when and who.

What Brown keeps circling back to is the lack of a standard. Boxing does this constantly, he argues: a clear rule for how long a champ can sit before an interim strap gets introduced. The UFC has no such line, which turns every situation like this into a judgment call — and this particular judgment call smells off to him.

A Gut Punch, Not a Fix?

Brown's real suspicion is that the interim title has less to do with keeping the division moving and more to do with sending Makhachev a message. He floated the idea directly: is this the UFC trying to punch the champ in the gut? Dana White has insisted the division needed to advance with Makhachev absent, but Brown doesn't buy it when the champion fought this recently and has been upfront about his timeline.

There's a competitive cost here too. Morales vs. Prates is a genuinely good fight, but pitting two live contenders against each other for a hollow belt means burning a legitimate challenger instead of feeding one to the champion. If Makhachev is clear about returning in the first half of 2026, Brown says, fine — let him pick his spot. The interim title is the one thing he can't get behind.