Carlos Prates won’t engage in an online war of words with Ian Machado Garry going into their UFC Kansas City main event bout on April 26, but he won’t leave Garry’s shots unanswered either.
Garry took on social media to poke fun of Prates for a past MMA loss in China, when he quit mid-fight, saying the Brazilian showed the “true fighting spirit“ of a “quitter.”
“We already expected that to happen,” Prates said of Garry’s verbal attacks. “It’s normal for him to do it. He probably has a lot of free time. I don’t, brother. All the time I’m training, I’m doing my stuff, I’m doing interviews, I’m focused on the fight. But that’s part of the game. He wants to sell the fight, to be more known, to be hyped. I think that’s also important, it’s part of the game, like I said in my video [response]. I think it’s interesting.”
Prates pocketed $50,000 bonuses for every single one of his four UFC knockouts over Trevin Giles, Charles Radtke, Jingliang Li and Neil Magny in 2024, and said that Garry will ultimately thank him after their main event clash.
“Let’s see after the fight,” Prates said. “We have [nine] days left before the fight, [nine] days for the cage door to be closed and no one says anything anymore. And we’ll get it done the way it’s supposed to. And I guarantee you he’ll be thanking me. Deep in there, he knows I picked this fight. I gave him the main event.”
“He’s in the UFC for four years, if I’m not mistaken, and never headlined a card,” Prates continued. “He only won one bonus, poor guy. And now he has the opportunity to be the main event, an opportunity to make more money. First, because he took this fight on short notice only because they offered him a lot of money. And second, he’s the main event. After this fight, even though he’ll get a beating, he’ll thank me for the opportunity I gave him to make good money.”
Prates is always looking to knock people unconscious inside the cage, but won’t take Garry’s word to heart and use it as some sort of extra motivation for a beating.
“I don’t want to beat him [more], it doesn’t bother me,” Prates said. “I want to go there and win the way I always do, you know? I’m not a guy that’s like, ‘Oh, I have to hurt the guy.’ No, brother. He has to do his stuff the next day. This is a business, it’s money, you know? I’m being paid to go there and win the fight, but I want to win the way I like, a way that brings more money, a way that brings me a bonus, and that’s it.”
As for the MMA bout mentioned by Garry, the Fighting Nerds welterweight said he wasn’t in ideal conditions due to lack of training.
“I was in really bad shape,” Prates said. “I was in China for a month and had two kickboxing fights and then went to fight MMA. And I had already been poked hard in the eye. I couldn’t fight, brother. [I was] in China for a month, not training for a long time, freaking cold, cutting weight and not eating because I couldn’t train. But that’s it. It’s part of the work. It happens. On the 26th, it’s going to be way different than what he saw in that video.”
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