With Islam Makhachev joining the party, 2025’s welterweight now the deepest division in UFC history

It has been fun to debate the many motivations and meanings to Islam Makhachev moving up to welterweight, but one thing is certain. The place he’s headed? It’s one of the toughest blocks we’ve ever seen. The 170-pound division is teeming with monsters. Experienced killers. Trigger-happy young guns. Dudes whose noses hang on their faces like war-torn apostrophes.

Surely fighting Ilia Topuria couldn’t be all that daunting. You don’t duck a bike rack fistfight to charge a battlefield. Perhaps it says it all that, where Islam’s heading, champion Jack Della Maddalena might be the safest option within a country mile. After him is Sean Brady (19-1). Shakvat Rakhmonov (19-0). His buddy, Belal Muhammad (11-1-1 in his last 13) and the guy Belal overthrew, Leon Edwards (12-2-1 in his last 15). The younger guys, like 25-year-old Michael Morales (18-0), are coming. Guys like Ian Machado Garry and Joaquin Buckley are closing in, too.

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The hard-living Fighting Nerd, Carlos Prates?

He isn’t cutting back on the smokes so that he can hover in the top-10 range. He wants that title.

And then there’s Makhachev, adding to what has to be the greatest compilation of welterweights ever. In fact, that’s an understatement — with the consensus pound-for-pound best now entering the field, the current welterweight class is arguably the most stacked division in UFC history. Never has there been such a confluence of contenders showing up at the exact same place at the exact same time. There have been big collections of talent at bantamweight (2023), featherweight (2020) and lightweight (various times), especially over the past couple of years.

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But nothing quite like this.

Right now, the new wave of fighters are aging the old guard in dog years. Morales went through Gilbert Burns like he was a ticket-tearer to the top 10 on Saturday, finishing him in the first round. Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington are still hovering, but for how long? Usman fights Buckley in a couple of weeks in Atlanta, the same city that Rashad Evans snatched every last ounce of residual glory from Chuck Liddell in at UFC 88.

Should Buckley win he will join a conga line of contenders that Makhachev will leapfrog as he challenges for Della Maddalena’s title at some point later this year.

All of this, of course, only adds to the ongoing discussion of Makhachev’s full intentions after (reluctantly) vacating his lightweight belt. Should he beat Della Maddalena to win his second title, will he face the next man up in that butcher’s queue? Does he entertain a fight with Shakvat or Brady, or even Garry? Or does he make his bit of history — thus distinguishing himself from his longtime coach and mentor, Khabib Nurmagomedov — before heading back to lightweight to face off with the Topuria vs. Charles Oliveira winner?

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In any case, his arrival at welterweight has created a lethal logjam. And from the looks of it, proven contenders will have to turn on themselves as things play out, which is, A) undeniably fun from a fan’s perspective, and, B) the most damning brand of entertainment from the UFC’s. Killing off contenders isn’t how the UFC prefers to roll.

Yet with Shavkat returning, and Brady already poised for a title shot, eliminators are most definitely on the horizon. Garry said on “The Ariel Helwani Show” on Monday that he already knows the score, even if he did weigh-in as the official backup fighter for UFC 315’s title fight between Della Maddalena and Muhammad.

To get to a title fight, he’s going to have to clear at least one more major hurdle.

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It’s a snapshot in time, but you know how you know that this division as it stands is ridiculous? Six of the aforementioned names — outside of Makhachev and Della Maddalena — feel like they could legitimately win the title if given the opportunity within the next year.

Shavkat. Brady. Buckley. Garry. Morales. Prates.

Every one of them comes with marketing upside. Even though Garry took Shavkat to the scorecards, Rakhmonov still feels like the closest thing the UFC has to a ronin. Buckley has the best B-roll of the class. Garry is the man you love to hate. And the Ecuadorian Morales?

If the UFC can get him out of the APEX, he has all the hallmarks of a star.

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There are at least a couple of familiar names who could recapture the title too, in Belal and Usman. Some might think that Edwards has slipped out of this conversation, as he’s a win away from being a win away, but there’s still juice to his name. Covington? Perhaps the less said about him, the better, but standard names in the rungs like Geoff Neal are still going to have a say.

This is the longwinded way of saying that right now the welterweight division is stacked.

We will have to wait and see how Makhachev handles himself in his new weight class, but to cough up his lightweight belt and move up — at this point in time — is more audacious than people are giving him credit for. Maybe Islam does see “JDM” as the best route to conquer another weight class (although I’d advise everyone to sleep on Giacomo at your own risk), and the plan is the old one-and-done (a la Georges St-Pierre’s middleweight title grab at UFC 217).

But for a champion accused of killing off all the straying featherweights, it’s a hell of a response. Islam isn’t joining a stacked class, he’s making it historical.