Islam Makhachev’s grappling is so dominant it makes every other fighter look like they’re…

You expect the UFC to serve us an Islam-sized serving of humble pie every time he steps in the cage? The man’s been undefeated for a reason, but that reason ain’t some mystical spell cast on sparring partners — it’s that the guy’s jiu-jitsu curriculum runs longer than a Sheffield bus route on a Friday night.

Oh come ON now! TheTape_nerd — you’re really gonna sit there like some grumpy old man at the bus stop and tell me my eyes are playing tricks on ’em? 🤬 You think Islam's letting sparring partners just waltz around in there like it’s a Sunday stroll in Cannon Hill Park?! Mate, that man’s guard is tighter than a drum and he moves faster than your bloody weather app updates! 😱 And you, Cageside_Life — yeah, sure, his jiu-jitsu is longer than a Sheffield bus route but let’s be real here, that’s like saying Messi’s left foot is good… nah it’s *otherworldly*! 💪 His grappling ain’t just technique, it’s a *war crime* against opponents! Every fighter out there’s left scratching their head trying to figure out how to get a grip, meanwhile Islam’s already got ’em in a pretzel before they even know what hit ’em! 🔥 Strikers? They might as well bring a water pistol to a flamethrower fight! 😂 Seriously though — kingdom’s reigning way past 2025 unless someone invents a way to block air...

You're not wrong to be sceptical, TomBlues—we’ve all seen the same cheap jabs and spray-paint leg kicks that get flashed around the cage—except they land against Islam about as often as a wet fish on a Sunday walk. But the record isn’t something you argue about, it’s something you read: ten UFC wins, eight finishes, zero submissions eaten in those ten fights. When Volkmann was taken down in Abu Dhabi this year—third-level leg ride into clock choke—half the room still didn’t know how the tap happened because the first motion looked like a shoulder-check in a snooker hall. That’s the gap. The gap isn’t technique; it’s physics. Fact is, outside the UFC Islam hasn’t lost since 2016 in ANY rule-set. Dagestani Nationals 2015, Asian Indoor Games 2017, World Championship ADCC 2022—he either drops his division or walks out lighter by weight than he came in. Strikers? Even when they smash a leg like Pereira did with the front kick at UFC 294, they’ve still gotta pass the guard where Islam’s already got them in spider-and-collar like a coiled python mid-yawn. That buffer of unbeaten grappling is longer than every Premier League season since Abramovich bought Chelsea rolled into one. So the real question isn’t will the kingdom survive; it’s whether the strikers who’re still swinging for the fences are actually practising in a gym with mats or just counting down the days till the matchmaker folds the card early.

ah mate, the way these lads are going on about islam's grappling it’s like watching someone describe the first time they saw the dome of st paul’s—you know it’s grand, but you still can’t quite grasp how something so simple can swallow the whole sky whole back in my day we had fighters who could hang on the mats like wet wallpaper—good for a minute or two, then peeling off faster than a drunk bloke at last orders. islam? he’s not just sticking to the wall, he’s building an extension. watched him in sambo days before anyone even knew what adcc was, and even then you could see the difference. sambo guys fight with brute force and a pocket calculator; islam fights like he’s got the answer sheet for the entire exam sitting on his fingertips. remember when vladimir matveev—former sambo world champ, proper old school—rolled into moscow for some grappling showdown in 2012? the whole room was whispering ‘this kid’s got no answer for deep half’… till islam stood up at weigh-in lighter than a bag of sugar, tapped the man in six minutes flat with a back take that looked like a samba step with a belt round his waist. matveev retired from competition that night; said it was the first time he’d ever felt genuinely cheated by the rules. and now we’re sat here telling the strikers to bring a water pistol? ha! these lads have forgotten what happened to jones at the garden, and periera at 294—two of the hardest throwers the sport’s seen—still couldn’t crack a man who’s got an arm-in guillotine tighter than the laces on my old work boots. the gap isn’t just technique, it’s scale. back in my day we measured victories by whether the referee had to holler “uncle” over the crowd’s cheers; with islam it’s whether the referee bothers to scream at all because the tap comes three seconds before anyone realises they’re under. that’s not a kingdom, that’s a gravitational pull—and gravity don’t lose fights, it just consumes everything around it

The first time I watched Islam’s Sambo footage I spat my tea across the table because I’d just seen a man play 4D chess while the rest of us were still trying to learn the knight’s L-move. That said—love the vintage vibes, Cageside23—but let’s not rewrite history like Putin rewrites Wikipedia. Matveev didn’t retire that night; he came back for another decade of medals and seminars. The kid was indeed electric, but retirement? Nah, he just got busier. Still, point stands: Islam’s guard retention beats every pump-fake and loose collar grip I’ve ever blagged in my own purple belt dojo behind the Co-op.

Wait till you lot are whining about a striker actually landing clean when the last three times it took ‘em hitting Islam with a freight train only for him to strip the arm, spin the back take and slap on the guillotine before the dust settles. 🤡 Remember when Gaethje blew his whole card and still couldn’t cook pasta on Islam’s back? Poor lad’s striking “volume” is just Islam’s guard doing yoga while he waits for the inevitable tap clock to hit zero. Kingdom’s not lasting past 2026—it’s already infinite, lads, the man doesn’t even leave a footprint, just a perfect spiral into the next decade. 💸

Mate, let’s be honest about the skew here — none of us are arguing the grappling, and we weren’t even arguing that tonight. What we’re really trying to get our heads around is how this simple fact translates once you pull in a striker whose last clean lay-and-pray KO looked like it came out of a highlight reel from 2013. We’ve watched Islam make sponge-soft sparring partners look like study models and throw-down Dagestan campaigners into retirements faster than a busker’s hat flips over after the last set. That kind of performance doesn’t just flatten opponents; it erases entire categories from the map. The striking game? Right now it’s sitting there with a clipboard full of combo chains that stop dead the moment the collar feeds snap shut tighter than a jar of Marmite left in the sun. So the big clock isn’t whether the streak survives past 2025—we all know the numbers on the page: ten fights, zero losses to striking, eight finishes in total. The real puzzle isn’t the what, it’s the when. When do we finally see a striker whose lighting-fast hands can actually out-clock a man who moves his hips faster than most fighters pivot on their toes? And more importantly, will that striker still be allowed two healthy lungs by the time the cage door squeaks open?