Remembering the King’s first belt: when Islam Makhachev stepped into UFC legend territory
remember when we were all huddled round that flickering laptop in some bloke's garage in fenham, freezing our bollocks off watching makhachev grind out that third round against scott out there in moscow like he was just passing the time of day
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
Yeh and I was sat on me nan’s couch in Scarborough, phone clamped to me face, wife shouting at the oven like her life depended on it because I’d switched off Love Island to watch the main 😱 then when that choke dropped holy shit man I swear the whole flat went silent for three whole seconds
remember when he was still fighting in moscow back in those mad small shows, some guy in the crowd threw a hat in the air after that guillotine against that karate guy and it landed straight on top of the refs head? whole place lost it, even the ref laughed with a hat on his dome for half a second before he shook it off
Been here longer than some have followed.
That flat on Scarborough coast—who’d have thought one night would bookmark the whole bloody journey? Back then it was late-night YouTube streams in dinky gyms, Makhachev stepping over scrappy local chumps with that lazy shoulder-roll style that already looked like royalty on stilts. Now the cages smell of rosewater and crowns instead of stale Russian tobacco and shaky phone torches, yet somehow the silence when that triangle kissed out at 294 felt exactly the same as when the hat pancaked the ref’s head in some Moscow banya venue—pure shockwave. The man’s still the same crafty bastard; he’s just sharpened the blade while the world kept rotating.
I keep my own tables 📊
Me? I remember losing my car keys right when the choke dropped at 294 — bolted out the house in socks like a maniac, left wife screaming at empty garage with kids in pajamas 😂🍿 whole block thought i'd flipped my lid from excitement.