Answer in brief
At UFC 330, Makhachev beat Ian Machado Garry by judges' decision and completed 7 of 15 takedowns. Written reports and the official scorecards let us reconstruct the rounds, but not the technical difference between a stopped attempt and a successful one.
What the Written Reports Actually Let Us Reconstruct About UFC 330
This account is built on three independent written reports — Cageside Press, ESPN and BBC Sport — plus the official scorecards from MMA Decisions. It states plainly where the sources disagree with each other (round one, round four), and where the written sources simply do not answer the question of what exactly the champion changed between a stopped attempt and a successful one: the reports do not record that level of technical detail, and this piece does not pass off a guess as an established fact.
UFC 330 by the Numbers: a 17th Straight Win and Seven Takedowns from Fifteen
At UFC 330 on 15 August 2026 in Philadelphia, Islam Makhachev made the first defence of his UFC welterweight title, winning a unanimous decision (49–46, 49–46, 48–47) over Ian Machado Garry and extending his promotion unbeaten run to 17 straight fights, passing Anderson Silva's record of more than 13 years. ESPN's official statistics, citing UFC Stats, credit Makhachev with 7 successful takedowns from 15 attempts across the fight — 47%. Not every first attempt in a given round ended on the mat: in round three Garry scrambled out quickly after a Makhachev takedown and then stopped his later attempts, and the sources describe round one differently from each other. But across the five rounds the picture is uneven: in round four, per Cageside Press, the takedown landed only after Garry's defence, and the champion then scored a second takedown in that same round; in round five, per Cageside Press and ESPN, a stalled entry at the fence gave way to a completed takedown and back control. Round two is a separate case: Garry was dropped by a high kick, got up, and was taken down again almost immediately — this is independently described by both Cageside Press and BBC Sport. What exactly Makhachev changed between the failed attempt and the next one — attack level, angle, tempo, hand-fighting — the written reports do not describe. What follows goes round by round through what the independent reports actually record and where they disagree with each other.
Round One: a First-Attempt Takedown or a Positional Stalemate? Accounts Disagree
This is where the written reports disagree the most. In Cageside Press's detailed account, Makhachev opened the round with a low kick, then a high kick and a shot at the legs; Garry defended that attempt but gave up his back while getting up and had to scramble to the fence, after which Makhachev could not take him down again for the rest of the round — the remainder played out almost static against the fence, with no further takedown. BBC Sport describes the same round differently: in its version, Makhachev took Machado Garry down on his first attempt and then controlled the rest of the round, pinning the challenger against the cage. The Wikipedia article on the event broadly follows the BBC version. A previously published VJOURNAL piece on the judging of this fight also says Makhachev won the grappling in round one — which lines up with BBC rather than Cageside. This piece cannot settle which version is more accurate: it may be that the two accounts are emphasising different parts of the same sequence — the leg entry itself and the subsequent fence control — described differently by each reporter. The honest move here is to record the disagreement rather than force a single conclusion.
Round Two: a High-Kick Knockdown, Side Control and Survival in Half Guard
In round two, according to Cageside Press's account, Garry first pressed Makhachev against the fence in a clinch, but the champion answered with a high kick that dropped him; Garry got back to his feet but was taken down again almost immediately — after which Makhachev began looking for a choke and moved to side control. Garry fought it off, recovered half guard and survived the round without being finished. The Wikipedia article describes the same stretch more briefly: the high kick caused a knockdown, after which Garry had to scramble to survive the round. The wording differs in the details but not in the outcome: the round ended under Makhachev's control. This exact sequence — dropped by a strike, back up, taken down again — illustrates the article's theme better than anything else: Garry's failure in one area (defending the strike) immediately turned into a second failure in another (defending the takedown).
Round Three: the Takedown Landed, but Garry Escaped Immediately and Won It Striking
Round three was not a round with no takedowns, as a simplified summary of this fight might suggest — it was a round with one completed takedown and at least one stopped attempt. Per Cageside Press, after an exchange of strikes at range Makhachev landed a key takedown, but Garry immediately scrambled back to his feet; the rest of the round belonged to Garry's striking — a body shot, a high kick that only grazed Makhachev, a spinning back fist and a roundhouse kick, while a separate front kick from Garry did not land — and at one point Garry stuffed another takedown attempt. ESPN describes the same stretch more broadly: Garry stuffed several takedown attempts in round three and started attacking more. The two outlets independently agree on the outcome: Cageside calls Garry the near-certain winner of round three, and ESPN calls it Garry's best round of the fight. The official scorecards confirm this without exception: all three judges — Michael Bell, Eric Colon and Sal D'Amato — scored round three for Garry, 9–10. It is the only round in the fight scored unanimously against the champion.
Round Four: a Takedown Paid for in Strikes Absorbed, and a Split Scorecard
Per Cageside Press's detailed account, Makhachev's takedown in this round landed precisely because of a defensive mistake by Garry: instead of simply defending, he tried to land strikes at the same time and left himself open. After a scramble to the fence (where Garry complained to the referee that Makhachev was grabbing the cage), the champion lifted Garry, failed to complete the throw, but then scored a second takedown in that same round — at the cost of absorbing several short strikes. By the end of the round, according to the same source, Garry looked fresh while Makhachev was bleeding. ESPN independently records part of the same picture: Garry landed short, telling strikes in the clinch, especially in round four, while Makhachev spent a lot of energy holding position. The official scorecards show the round was read differently: two of the three judges — Bell and D'Amato — scored it 10–9 for Makhachev, while the third judge, Eric Colon, scored the round 9–10 for Garry — meaning even the official scoring is not unanimous on this stretch of the fight.
Round Five: a Standing Exchange, a Repeat Takedown and a Body Triangle to the Final Horn
Round five opened with an exchange of strikes: per Cageside Press's account, Garry landed a few shots — a straight right, a high kick, a body shot — before Makhachev changed levels; Garry scrambled to the fence, but the champion still completed a takedown the source calls badly needed, then took the back with both hooks in and held the position to the final horn. ESPN describes the same entry as happening within the round's first ninety seconds and adds that after a brief return to his feet, Garry was taken back down and Makhachev spent the closing minutes on his opponent's back with a body triangle. Both details — the leg entry early in the round and the final back control — are independently confirmed by both sources; they differ only on exactly what preceded the leg entry. This exact sequence — Garry's failed scramble, the repeat entry, the back take — shows most precisely how the fight ended: the champion did not win the decisive exchange in a single motion, but closed it out in several steps.
Seven Takedowns by the Numbers, Without an Official Round-by-Round Split
The final grappling numbers for this fight are: 7 takedowns completed from 15 attempts, or 47%, according to ESPN citing UFC Stats. BBC Sport reports that these seven takedowns went unanswered (Garry landed none over the course of the fight), and that Makhachev's total control time exceeded 12 minutes against 34 seconds for Garry. An official round-by-round breakdown of those seven takedowns could not be obtained as of this writing, and the available written reports do not give the number of attempts for each round separately. Reconstructing that breakdown from prose accounts would be inaccurate: as round three shows (see above), a written recap does not record every attempt with the precision needed for a count.
Why the Judges Sided with Makhachev Despite Fewer Strikes Landed
Over the course of the fight Garry landed more significant strikes — 29 to Makhachev's 22 — yet the champion won on the scorecards. ESPN names persistent wrestling and the round-two high-kick knockdown as the deciding factors — that is, not overall strike volume but specific moments in the fight. Makhachev was also more accurate by percentage: 22 of 44, or 50%, against Garry's 29 of 65, or 44.6%; the figures "29 to 22" reflect the number of strikes landed, not accuracy. After the fight, Makhachev gave a brief assessment of his opponent: "Ian is a great fighter, a good man, and I respect him" (ESPN, published 16 August 2026). VJOURNAL has covered separately, using this same fight as an example, exactly how MMA round-judging criteria work and why landing fewer strikes does not stop a fighter winning the cards; those criteria are not repeated here.
Beyond the Written Reports: What Only the Footage Could Confirm
Every grappling sequence in this piece comes from written reports by Cageside Press, ESPN and BBC Sport, not from watching the fight footage. That level of detail is enough to identify the type of action, the position and the outcome of an exchange — side control, half guard, back control with hooks, a body triangle. It is not enough to establish exactly what Makhachev changed between a failed and a successful entry — attack level, angle, timing, hand-fighting in the clinch: written reports do not record that level of detail, and none of the three accounts walks through the transition between attempts step by step. Readers can check this for themselves only by comparing the relevant segments of the UFC 330 broadcast in the official fight archive — round one (the leg entry at the start of the round), round four (the first takedown after a series of exchanges) and round five (the repeat entry after Garry's scramble). Until that comparison is made, the answer to this question stays open rather than being filled in by assumption.
Practical checklist
- What exactly Makhachev changes in position or tempo right after a stopped attempt — a question the written reports do not answer.
- How Garry sets up his defence after the first takedown — keeping distance or moving into the clinch.
- Who controls position at the fence in moments when the referee does not stop the fight.
- How the judges' scorecards diverge on the contested rounds, and why.
- How the count of significant strikes and control time shifts by the end of the fight.
Questions and answers
Was Garry more accurate on the feet just because he landed more strikes?
No: Garry landed more significant strikes overall — 29 to 22 (ESPN Stats API data) — but Makhachev was more accurate by hit percentage, 50% (22 of 44) against Garry's 44.6% (29 of 65).
Was this Makhachev's first welterweight title defence?
Yes: he won the title on 15 November 2025 at UFC 322 against Jack Della Maddalena by unanimous decision, 50–45 on all three cards, and the fight with Garry on 15 August 2026 was his first defence of that belt.
Who could be Makhachev's next opponent?
As of the date this was checked (15 September 2026), no next fight has been booked; ESPN names Michael Morales and Carlos Prates as likely contenders, with no date given.