Ian Garry Has Turned Getting Hated Into a New Art Form — That’s Not a Good Thing

Getty Ian Garry poses on the scale in 2022.

Ian Garry may well be the most hated fighter in the UFC roster right now — and though that can often be leveraged into pay-per-view sales, that is likely not the case with the Irishman.

Garry competes in the upcoming UFC 298 box office event Saturday, February 17 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California on the undercard of a main event that features Alexander Volkanovski and Illia Topuria.

The UFC 298 is stacked with competitive fights, top talent, and big names, including Robert Whittaker’s middleweight match against Paulo Costa, Merab Dvalishvili’s bantamweight bout against Henry Cejudo, and Amanda Lemos vs. Mackenzie Dern in a strawweight fight.

Aside from the headline fight, Garry has commanded a lot of attention heading into the show — and it’s all for the wrong reasons.

This is not like Conor McGregor or Floyd Mayweather — two of the most polarizing combat sports superstars of the last two decades, who lured fans and haters into paying for their fights to either watch them win or lose.

This is like ‘go away’ heat in pro wrestling as fight fans have turned on Garry in a way that suggests they don’t even want him competing on a card they’re supporting.

In brief, here’s how fans turned on Garry:

• MMA fans on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, unearthed a book written by Garry’s wife — Layla Anna-Lee — called ‘How to be a wag’
• Rival fighters then voiced their opinions online, including Sean Strickland, who said in 2023 that Garry needed to be saved. “I hope you have a good prenup,” he said
• Strickland, who is popular with the MMA fanbase, posted alleged private messages he’d had with Garry. One of those messages implied Garry threatened to sue Strickland
• MMA Fighting reported in December, that year, that Garry had alienated other members of the UFC roster, including “Brendan Allen and Sean Brady, and the team of welterweight champion Leon Edwards”
• Backlash on the internet continued to mount against Garry, particularly when he withdrew from his scheduled UFC 296 match against Vicente Luque, citing pneumonia
• “Not many people want to be heels because they can’t handle the boos, and I was just curious … it was going to be a very rare test,” popular podcaster and former UFC fighter Chael Sonnen told MMA Junkie. “He was put in an interesting position. I’m disappointed we’re not going to see the fight.” Sonnen also said Garry’s “PR sucks”
• Garry was put to the test this week as fans vehemently booed him at Thursday’s pre-fight press conference.
• Condemnation followed when he said, after UFC 298 on Saturday, he’ll be “too big” to headline a UFC card in Ireland

Fans & Fighters Just Don’t Like Garry

Garry may well struggle to turn the jeers into cheers as fans seem to want to watch him lose, just so he disappears from prominent spots on fight cards like UFC 298.

McGregor headlined a UFC Fight Night event in Dublin in 2014 — one of the most iconic MMA events to ever take place in Europe — and boxing star Katie Taylor has headlined a combat sports show in that country, too.

Garry’s claim to be “too big” to main event a card in Ireland was met with a face palm emoji from the former UFC fighter Darren Till.

Garry Wants to Make Strickland Pay For His Past Comments

Should Garry overcome the frosty reception expected when he walks to the Octagon ahead of his UFC 298 match, and also defeat Geoff Neal, then he may target Strickland.

“The people that follow Sean Strickland commented on a couple of my photos at the very start of this hate saying, ‘Is the kid even his?’ I should never have to hear that,” Garry told reporters at this week’s media day, according to MMA Weekly.

Garry said it emotionally got to him.

He then said: “I’ll thump the [expletive] mouth off Sean Strickland one day and there’ll be nothing he can do about it.

“I’ll talk to him, I’ll dance in his face, I’ll do whatever I want. Because the truth is, when we get locked into that cage one day, he’s never going to be able to deal with me.”

Strickland is yet to respond.