Colby Covington Says Carlos Prates Has "No Chance" Against Islam Makhachev: "Easiest Fight of His Career"

Nobody in this sport says the quiet part quite like Colby Covington, and on Wednesday's edition of The Ariel Helwani Show he said it about the welterweight title picture. Asked about a potential Islam Makhachev vs. Carlos Prates championship fight, the former interim champ didn't hedge, didn't qualify, and didn't leave the Brazilian so much as a puncher's chance. "No chance. Carlos has nothing for him," Covington said on The Ariel Helwani Show.

It's a cold verdict on the division's hottest contender — and it's worth taking seriously, because Covington has lived inside the exact fire Prates would be walking into.

The verdict on Prates

Covington's full read on the matchup, per LowKickMMA's report of the show, was devastating in its simplicity. Prates, he argued, is "just a straight striker" — a one-dimensional danger against the most complete fighter in the sport. His prediction, as reported by LowKickMMA: "That's gonna be the easiest fight of Makhachev's career," Covington told Helwani. "I think he takes him down and submits him with like a Kimura or a head-and-arm choke."

Stripped of the bombast, the analysis is recognizably sound. Islam Makhachev is 29-1, the pound-for-pound king, and coming off a unanimous-decision defense over Ian Machado Garry at UFC 330 in August that broke Anderson Silva's record with his 17th consecutive UFC win. The Dagestani has made a career of solving exactly this puzzle: the elite striker who has never been forced to wrestle for five rounds. Prates's three-fight finishing run is genuinely spectacular — the spinning-elbow knockout of Geoff Neal at UFC 319, the flattening of former champion Leon Edwards at Madison Square Garden, and the third-round TKO of former champion Jack Della Maddalena in Perth — but none of those men could do what Makhachev does to people. The takedown changes everything, and Makhachev's takedowns are the argument no striker has won.

There is, of course, the standard counterargument, and it's the one Prates's backers will make all the way to the walkout: it only takes one. Prates has 22 stoppages in 24 wins; his power is the kind that ends arguments in an instant. Makhachev has been touched before. The problem for the Brazilian is that "the puncher's chance" is what you invoke when the rest of the fight is spoken for — and Covington's point is that against this champion, the rest of the fight very much is.

The smoking comment

Covington also went after Prates's conditioning, and he did it in the most Covington way possible: by going after the habit. He said Prates gets tired late and attributed it to the Brazilian's well-documented cigarette smoking, arguing that the contender needs to quit entirely if he wants to become a legitimate champion.

It's easy to file that under trash talk, but there's a real scouting note buried in it. Prates went the distance with Garry in April 2025 and lost — his only UFC defeat — and championship fights at welterweight are five rounds against a man who drowns people in deep water. If the cardio question is real, it's the kind of flaw that doesn't show up against Neal and Edwards and then shows up all at once against Makhachev. Covington, who has gone 25 championship minutes with the best of them, knows what the fifth round costs. His message to Prates was blunt: the lifestyle has to match the ambition.

The Morales wildcard

On Michael Morales, Covington was notably more measured — which, from him, is practically a compliment. He said the division still needs to see how the unbeaten Ecuadorian's takedown defense holds up, noting that Morales hasn't been tested in big fights or high-level five-rounders, so "we don't know what to expect," Covington said of Morales's chances against the champion.

That's the honest unknown in the division. Morales is 19-0 with a 7-0 UFC record, and his last three wins — over Neil Magny, Gilbert Burns and Sean Brady — all ended in first-round knockouts. The power is undeniable and the reach is a weapon. But Covington's skepticism has company: Sean Brady, the last man to share the cage with Morales, told MMA Junkie in August that the Ecuadorian would be a harder test for Makhachev than Prates — while adding the same caveat about the untested ground game and cardio. When even your admirers lead with the question marks, the question marks are real.

The division's waiting game doesn't help. Morales hasn't fought since the Brady stoppage last November, and his ongoing public feud with Ian Garry has produced more Instagram callouts than signed bout agreements. Morales announced this week that he'll return in January against an opponent who is neither Garry nor Prates — Garry, for his part, claims the UFC already sent him a date and accuses Morales of ducking. Until Morales fights someone who can test the holes in his game, Covington's "we don't know" remains the last word.

Covington's own chaos

Worth remembering who delivered the verdict: Covington (17-5) hasn't won a UFC fight since 2022 and hasn't competed in the Octagon since Joaquin Buckley stopped him in Tampa in December 2024. He was pulled from a submission-only grappling bout in Quito just this past weekend after being hospitalized. The MMA chapter of his career is, charitably, on pause.

But the competitive chapter isn't over — it's just moved to a different mat. Covington is 5-0 in RAF's crossover wrestling circuit, where he holds the inaugural crossover title, and on November 14 he'll defend it against none other than Khamzat Chimaev at RAF Abu Dhabi. Chimaev is 3-0 in RAF himself and, per LowKickMMA, will face Robbie Lawler at RAF 14 in Las Vegas on October 23 first. A Covington-Chimaev wrestling match with a title on the line is its own kind of main event — and it means the man burying Prates's chances will be sharing a mat with the former middleweight champion five weeks from now. The irony writes itself.

The welterweight logjam

So where does the division actually go from here? Prates says he's next — he told Helwani he signed a new eight-fight contract and that the UFC has promised him the title shot. Makhachev, for his part, has said he's targeting a return in January. The timing works, the story works, and the stylistic clash is the kind the sport sells best: the knockout artist against the grappling machine.

Covington's contribution is to remind everyone what usually happens in that movie. Strikers with a puncher's chance have been walking into Makhachev's world for years, and the record is 29-1. The one loss came a decade ago. Prates is the most dangerous version of the archetype yet — nobody at 170 hits like him — but dangerous and sufficient are different words. And Morales, the other name in the conversation, is still a highlight reel with a question mark attached.

The champion looms over all of it, waiting on his January return, while the two men chasing him argue about who's more deserving and a retired interim champ on a wrestling circuit tells anyone who'll listen that neither one is ready. That's the welterweight division in October 2026: a king, two princes, and a court jester who might be the smartest analyst in the room.