Ian Machado Garry got the call he had been demanding for months. On Wednesday, the UFC announced that the unbeaten-at-welterweight Irishman will challenge Islam Makhachev for the 170-pound title in the Aug. 15 main event at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, MMA Fighting reported. It is the biggest fight of his career. And the week he finally got it, the story attached to his name had nothing to do with Makhachev. It was a piece of training footage and a man he used to call a teammate.

What actually happened

The short version, as reported by BloodyElbow, is this. Alexei Pergande, an undefeated PFL featherweight and a former training partner of Garry's, ended up at the center of clips that showed Garry being out-wrestled and out-grappled in the gym. Those videos were posted online by Ali Abdelaziz, who manages Makhachev. Garry unfollowed Pergande on social media. Pergande says he never meant for it to blow up. Garry says Pergande filmed him without permission and kept filming after being told to stop. The two men now publicly disagree about basic facts.

That is the whole professional core of it, and it is worth keeping the focus exactly there, because the actual substance is smaller and more interesting than the noise around it. This is a story about gym etiquette and about who owns the footage shot inside a training room. It is also a story about timing. It surfaced the same week a manager on the other side of the fight had every reason to want video of Garry getting taken down circulating.

Pergande pushed back hard on the framing. "This video of me taking down Ian Machado Garry is getting blown completely out of proportion," he said in a video on his TikTok, per BloodyElbow. He argued the clip was old and that Garry's grappling has moved on since. "Ian Machado Garry's wall work and grappling, wrestling in general has evolved so much since then and not to mention, it's literally training," Pergande said. "This is what training is for to get put into bad positions and then work your way out and become better."

Garry's account is different. Asked by a fan why he had unfollowed Pergande, he said it came down to consent. "Because he filmed me without permission and then secretly kept filming me after I asked him to stop," Garry said, per BloodyElbow. Pergande called that a lie. "None of that was true," he responded. "I'm not really sure why he's lying which that never happened. I don't respect people who lie about my name."

We have two accounts and no third party, so this is where the honest line sits. Both versions are on the record, attributed to the men who said them, and they do not reconcile. We are not going to pretend to know which one is true. What is verifiable is that Garry stopped following Pergande, that Abdelaziz posted the clips, and that the men are now arguing in public about the terms of how that video was shot.

Why footage is the recurring theme

The detail that lifts this above a one-day social-media spat is that it is not the first time filming has cost Garry a training relationship. BloodyElbow notes he was asked to leave Leon Edwards' Team Renegade, also over filming. Whatever you make of either falling-out, a pattern of friction around cameras in the gym is the kind of thing that follows a fighter from camp to camp.

The geography matters here too. Garry built his early UFC run at Kill Cliff FC in Florida under Henri Hooft, then made a real change in 2023, moving his base to Brazil to work at Chute Boxe alongside the likes of Charles Oliveira, per BloodyElbow. Gym moves are normal in this sport. They are also where most of these stories start. A fighter changes camps, old teammates become opponents or strangers, and footage that once stayed in the room does not always stay there. The Pergande clips are a clean example of how a private training moment becomes a public asset the second a relationship cools.

There is a competitive layer underneath the drama that is easy to miss. The clips show grappling. Garry's one professional loss came against a grappler. The man on the other side of the August title fight is one of the best grapplers the sport has produced. None of that proves anything about how the Makhachev fight will go, but it explains why footage of Garry being taken down travels so fast, and why a rival manager would be the one to circulate it.

The fight itself, and what the record actually says

Set the locker-room story aside and the sporting case for Garry is real. His run since his only loss has been the best stretch of his career. Per the UFC's announcement reported by MMA Fighting, Garry carries a 17-1 record into the title shot. The single blemish, verified against FightIQ's gold fight dataset, is a unanimous-decision loss to Shavkat Rakhmonov on Dec. 7, 2024, a five-round fight Rakhmonov controlled.

What he did after that loss is the argument for him being here. He beat Carlos Prates by unanimous decision on April 26, 2025, then beat former champion Belal Muhammad by unanimous decision on Nov. 22, 2025, both confirmed in the gold dataset. BloodyElbow tied his improvement directly to the camp change, and the results back the timeline. Two wins over ranked welterweights, one of them a former titleholder, is a legitimate ticket to a championship fight.

Makhachev's side is more daunting. He took the welterweight title from Jack Della Maddalena by decision at UFC 322 in November 2025, before which he held the lightweight belt and defended it a UFC-record four straight times before vacating, MMA Fighting reported. He carries a 28-1 record and has won 16 straight since his lone loss in 2015. Makhachev himself named Garry his top contender back on June 1, telling UFC on TNT Sports, "A lot of contenders, but No. 1 is Ian Garry," per MMA Fighting.

This is a fight FightIQ's model will weigh in on closer to fight night, and the matchup runs straight into the exact area the leaked clips poke at: a long, sharp striker with one career loss, against an elite grappler whose whole game is closing distance and putting people on the mat. Our read will lean on what the grappling exchanges actually look like over five rounds, weighing the full body of tape rather than a single training clip stripped of context. For now the honest position is the simple one. Garry has earned the shot. The stylistic mountain in front of him is as steep as any in the division.

The thing to watch

The Pergande story will fade fast, the way most fight-week social-media items do. What it leaves behind is a question Garry will be asked again, because it has now come up at two different camps: how he handles being filmed, and how he handles teammates who become collateral. That is a professional reputation issue, and it is one that plays out in public, so it is fair to track.

The footage controversy and the fight it arrived alongside are two halves of the same story, told from opposite sides of a training-room door. One side is the polished contender who finally got his title shot. The other is the man on the mat in a clip nobody was supposed to see. Both are now part of the record going into Aug. 15.

Note on sourcing: the locker-room details and both fighters' direct quotes come from a single outlet, BloodyElbow, which carries the on-the-record statements from each man. The title-fight booking, records, and Makhachev quote are corroborated by MMA Fighting and verified against FightIQ's gold dataset. Where this piece relies on one source for the dispute itself, it is labeled as such, and both accounts are presented without endorsing either.