Sean Brady hopes he’ll fight Ian Machado Garry next following his big win at UFC Austin.
Brady returned for the first time in more than a year and dominated Kelvin Gastelum en route to a third-round submission win this past Saturday. The 31-year-old called for a fight with Garry — who is scheduled to face Vicente Luque at UFC 296 later this month — and was asked why Garry is taking so much criticism from fellow fighters, such as current middleweight champion Sean Strickland and welterweight champ Leon Edwards.
“I think he’s doing it to himself,” Brady said Monday on The MMA Hour. “I had one of my best friends [in Austin] follow me with the camera doing certain stuff. We have to post on social media, we have to do all that, but he’s bringing these cameras into these gyms. He’s going into Renegade with these guys and trying to film them, and doing it at Kill Cliff and talking about knocking out sparring partners and releasing footage of hurting people and just doing the weirdest s***. Your team is supposed to be your family.
“I was already down by my gym [on Monday], we had some guys win over the weekend and I went in and congratulated them, did my podcast, see my coach. Like, those guys are my family, and he just bounces around and goes to all these different gyms and it seems like he’s always just causing trouble, and I just don’t like it. I feel like real fighters like me and real teams, they don’t like that s*** either. Like Henry Hooft and those guys, they’re an amazing team and I’m a fan of them. Eddie Alvarez was down there years ago and I’ve always seen them and it seemed like they were a super tight knit group, and it just seems like Ian kind of rubbed all them guys the wrong way too.
“I know Brendan Allen, I know Brendan came out and said, like, ‘Yo, you’re talking about knocking people out in the gym and doing all this stuff, but we got footage of you getting knocked out, so you won’t like a taste of your own medicine.’ I just think the real ones don’t like that s***.”
Brady bounced back from his first loss at UFC Austin after being stopped by Belal Muhammad in October 2022 at UFC 280. He says he spent the past year recovering from a nasty infection, along with working on the mental side of the sport. The 15-1 fighter believes he is one of the top welterweights in the world, and now has that confidence in himself as well.
As far as getting the matchup with Garry should he be successful against Luque, Brady doesn’t see why it can’t happen.
“I think so,” Brady said. “I was originally supposed to be fighting Luque and then he stole my opponent, so then I got matched up with Kelvin. But I think it would make sense. I don’t know how he would like it stylistically. He knows. He’s smart, he knows who’s a good matchup for him, who’s a bad matchup, and I think I’m a bad matchup for him. I’m hoping he’s seeing all this and I hope that it gets back to him and I hope he knows that I want to fight him.
“I don’t like talking sh** or anything like that, he’s done that to Neil Magny in in the past with the talking about beating the kids and putting Neil in [a bad spot], and then he’s talking about suing fighters and doing all this stuff, and he’s just rubbed me the wrong way. So I’d love to get in there and get into a fight with him.”
