The man most people still call the greatest welterweight ever thinks the other welterweight champion is about to make history. Georges St-Pierre told MMA Junkie that Islam Makhachev holds the edge over Ian Machado Garry at UFC 330 on Aug. 15, and the reason he gave was the same one that has decided most of Makhachev's career.

"Islam has the edge in terms of skills because he's more well-rounded," St-Pierre said. "He's got an edge in that department and I think that's what he's going to try to go for."

Makhachev (28-1) defends the welterweight title against Garry (17-1) at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia, and the win would be his 17th straight in the Octagon, sole possession of the consecutive-wins record. St-Pierre framed it as a grappling-or-striking question, and he is not wrong to: Makhachev took the belt off Jack Della Maddalena by unanimous decision last November, his first welterweight title, after a lightweight reign built on Charles Oliveira, Dustin Poirier and two wins over Alexander Volkanovski. Garry, 17-1 with his only loss to Shavkat Rakhmonov, beat Belal Muhammad over three rounds in November and has spent two years arguing he is the most complete striker at 170.

The lightweight belt left a vacancy and a fight over who fills it

The more revealing argument right now is one division down, where the lightweight title changed hands in a way almost nobody predicted. Justin Gaethje (28-5) stopped Ilia Topuria (KO/TKO, Round 4) at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 on the South Lawn of the White House, handing Topuria the first loss of his career and taking the belt. Arman Tsarukyan (23-3) is the man most analysts had penciled in as the next challenger long before that result, and he is the one the next chapter keeps circling back to.

Paddy Pimblett does not buy it. Speaking to Demetrious Johnson, Pimblett said Tsarukyan has not earned the shot and went after his most recent win to make the point.

"I don't even think he deserves the next title shot, lad," Pimblett told Johnson. "He's beaten Dan Hooker in the past three years."

The record backs the literal claim and complicates the conclusion. Tsarukyan submitted Hooker in the second round last November, his most recent Octagon appearance. Pimblett also said Tsarukyan "couldn't beat" Mateusz Gamrot, and that one checks out too: Gamrot took a unanimous decision off Tsarukyan in 2022. What Pimblett skips is the fight that built Tsarukyan's case in the first place. Tsarukyan beat Charles Oliveira by split decision at UFC 300 in April 2024, and that win is what earned him a lightweight title shot to begin with.

Tsarukyan is not waiting around

While Pimblett argues the contender does not deserve the shot, the contender's own camp is quietly planning around not getting it next. Tsarukyan hasn't fought in the UFC since that Hooker win, instead competing nine times under the Real American Freestyle Wrestling banner. Bloody Elbow reported that his team now sees a rematch with Oliveira as the likely next move, because Gaethje is unlikely to return soon.

"Taking into account that Gaethje just fought and is unlikely to return to the octagon in the next six months and that Arman needs to stay active, the option with Oliveira is the most attractive," Tsarukyan's manager Sayat Abdrakhmanov told Match TV, according to Bloody Elbow.

That is the standoff: Pimblett says the resume is too thin, Tsarukyan's camp says the champion is too far away to wait for, and a rematch with the man Tsarukyan already beat at UFC 300 is the holding pattern. A second Oliveira win would answer the resume complaint cleanly. A loss would end the title talk.

What the model still owes on this division

Honesty first, because the lightweight title result is one we got wrong. We made Topuria a HIGH-confidence pick at 77.4% to beat Gaethje; the more cautious four-input stack had it at only 56.9%, barely off a coin flip, and the stack was the better read. Topuria got stopped. We said so then and we say it again here, because any take on this division has to start from the fact that the market and our loudest model both missed the fight that reshaped it.

The damage went deeper than the scorecards. Topuria's longtime friend Merab Dvalishvili told MMA Fighting that Topuria was "fighting blind since the first round" after a punch caught his eye, and was impaired in both eyes by the finish.

"He almost finished Justin Gaethje from the body shot. He even dropped him," Dvalishvili said. "If Ilia continued [throwing] hammerfists or throwing punches, he would finish him. But Ilia chased the submission and then Justin Gaethje somehow survived."

Whether that reframes the result is a separate question from whether it counts, and it counts. For context on where our reads stand: our live 2026 record is 68.8% across all picks (174-79) and 82.67% on the LOCK and HIGH-confidence tier (62-13). The Topuria call sits inside that HIGH tier as a loss, which is the honest version of the story. We have not published a number on Makhachev vs. Garry yet, so St-Pierre's read stands on its own for now, and his logic is the one we would test first: if Makhachev gets it to the ground, the math has rarely been close.

That is the divisional picture on June 29. One champion chasing a record nobody has held, one belt that just changed owners, and a No. 1 contender whose harder task may be outlasting the wait for the shot rather than earning it.