Montreal — He’s only in town as the back-up fighter, meaning he’s not likely to fight this weekend (unless of course something goes sideways with the UFC 315 main event between Belal Muhammad and Jack Della Maddalena), but Ian Machado Garry has nevertheless let his presence be felt.
There’s been encounters with the two aforementioned headliners, interviews, a bag of peanut M&Ms gifted to Maddalena (Garry’s way of saying ‘hey, bro, how bout you miss weight so I can step in?’). And a media day appearance on Wednesday, where Ireland’s Garry outlined the difference between himself and other welterweight hopefuls.
“I would say I’m actually fighting, I’m being active, I’m fighting the best guys in the world. I’m fighting the guys that people see as the most dangerous,” Garry (16-1) suggested, with media outlets including Cageside Press on hand for one of the more entertaining sessions of the day. “My last two fights, I’ve ended a 28-fight finish streak. And I’m that close to winning both of them.”
“So I’m fighting the most dangerous guys in the world, I’m being active, I’m afraid of no man on this planet, and I’m an absolute competitor. That’s all my body wants to do. My brain wants to fight the best, beat the best and become the best.”
Coming off a short-notice victory over Carlos Prates that earned him the backup slot this Saturday in Montreal, Garry also believes that for champ Belal Muhammad, who the Irish star credited as being a good human “with his mind switched on,” “it would be a smart move to want to fight me next. Because I’m going to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to selling the card, I’ll do all the heavy lifting when it comes to putting on a show. I’ll do all the noise, all he has to do is show up so I can win the belt.”
Of course, it helps that Muhammad appears to be on the same page as Garry, suggesting earlier in the day that he was doing all the right things to make himself be heard. Case in point, the M&Ms gag. Though it originally wasn’t going to be M&Ms. Garry in fact had something much larger planned.
“You want to know the truth of what we wanted to do? We wanted to hire a pizza truck and put it outside the hotel, and I wanted to say ‘free pizzas for anyone named Jack Della Maddalena,'” recalled Garry, “but we had to have like a license to sell stuff. We tried to do it, and I just thought ‘god that would be so f*cking funny if we could pull off something like that.’ Just create good content, wind people up, be interesting.”
Ian Machado Garry had planned to rent a…pizza truck? #UFC315
🎥🎙️: @CageSideJay pic.twitter.com/uYbEozFmAH
— Cageside Press (@Cagesidepress) May 7, 2025
That seems to be the difference between Garry and other fighters under the UFC banner. Personality. Creativity. The ability to get people talking. It’s a rarity these days, in a post-Brock, post-Ronda, post-Conor (and perhaps even post-Jones) UFC.
“The UFC has no lack of good fighters. You can look at any fighter on any roster, they’re all good fighters, they’re all the best in the world, that’s why they’re in the UFC. And they’re all striving to be the best,” noted Garry. “But personalities, people that are interesting. When you talk about stardom and superstars and genuine interest that is outside of the UFC bubble, that’s what people are finding hard to break through. It’s things like energy and aura and having a laugh and all that, that I find people just don’t get. We’re trying to just have a lot of fun on this journey, because the journey’s the most important part. And I never want to sit there and go ‘well I missed out on so many opportunities to have a laugh and wind people up.'”
And so Garry will always let his inner 16-year old out when he can, as he has this week, “because it’s security’s job to stop me, and it’s other people’s job to kind of rein me back. I think it’s only going to get worse, to be honest.”
Watch Ian Machado Garry’s full UFC 315 media day appearance above.
