Islam Makhachev has cleaned out his own lane. Now he’s looking across the street.
The UFC welterweight champion and current No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in MMA has admitted he’s genuinely intrigued by the idea of boxing Conor McGregor — not in the cage, not for a UFC belt, but under straight boxing rules.
Speaking to Ushatayka, Makhachev didn’t dance around it. He wants McGregor in the ring, and he’s convinced the matchup would be brutally one-sided once the early storm passes.
“Yes maybe he’s dangerous in the first round, but after that I don’t think he has any chance. Honestly, regardless of the purse I’d box (Conor),” Makhachev said.
That’s not a throwaway line. That’s the most dominant fighter in the sport right now openly calling out its biggest star, and saying the money doesn’t even matter.
A Fight That Makes No Sense… Except It Does
Inside the UFC, the bout is a non-starter. McGregor is coming off multiple losses and nowhere near a welterweight title shot. On merit, he’s miles away from Makhachev’s world.
Boxing changes the equation.
Strip away the takedowns, the clinch, the grappling — all the areas where Makhachev would maul McGregor in MMA — and suddenly the matchup looks different. McGregor, a former two-division UFC champion with proven knockout power, would be able to focus entirely on his hands and timing. No level changes to worry about. No chain wrestling to sap his legs. Just leather and nerve.
That’s where the intrigue lives for Dana White and the UFC machine. A Zuffa Boxing-style promotion pitting the sport’s most complete fighter against its most bankable name is the kind of crossover spectacle that sells itself.
Power vs. Control
On paper, Makhachev will never be billed as a pure striker in the way McGregor once was at his peak. His reputation has been built on suffocating control, elite grappling, and the kind of positional dominance that breaks opponents mentally before it breaks them physically.
But he can strike. He’s an “excellent striker,” as even his critics now concede, and he’s comfortable enough on the feet to believe he could hold his own with McGregor in a boxing ring.
McGregor, though, still carries the one thing you can’t coach: raw power. Even with the losses, even with the layoffs, that left hand remains the great equalizer. Over 12 rounds, Makhachev’s discipline and durability would be tested in a way they rarely are in MMA. One clean shot could flip everything. That’s McGregor’s puncher’s chance, and he’s built an empire on it.
Fantasy or Future?
Right now, the odds say this is nothing more than a fantasy matchup. Makhachev vs. McGregor in MMA feels distant. In boxing, it feels even less likely, tangled in contracts, timing, and the realities of where both men sit in their careers.
But Makhachev has done something important by saying it out loud: he’s opened a door. He’s told the biggest name in the sport that he’s willing to cross codes, step into a different world, and do it without demanding a king’s ransom.
If the best fighter alive is willing to box the sport’s biggest star “regardless of the purse,” how long before someone in power decides that kind of risk is worth the reward?
