Ian Machado Garry will get his hand raised at UFC 310, according to former UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling.

The Irishman will put his unbeaten, 15-0 record on the line against the 18-0 Shavkat Rakhmonov in a bout that will determine the next challenger to Belal Muhammad’s welterweight championship at this weekend’s UFC 310 in Las Vegas — and while the oddsmakers are falling on the side of the Kazakh phenom, not so Sterling who believes that Garry has all the necessary tools to dish out the first defeat of Rakhmonov’s career.

“I lean towards Ian Garry in this one,” Sterling said on his YouTube channel, as noted by MMA Fighting. “I just think because he’s familiar with him, I don’t know if he’s still training with the Chute Box guys, I think he has really good control management of the distance. For him to beat a guy like ‘MVP’ who is hard to get a hold of, it wasn’t the most exciting fight, but he did what he had to do to win. I think he knows how to win. I think he might outpoint him.”

Sterling adds that Rakhmonov’s grappling potential could also prove decisive in the fight but if Garry is able to negate that, he is more than capable of employing a ‘stick and move’ strategy on the feet that could shut the Kazakh down.

“I think to evaluate someone’s grappling, you have to see sequences to know how well they move on the ground,” Sterling said of Garry’s opponent. “And I don’t know if I’ve seen it, where it’s like, alright this is enough to if things get dicey on the feet he can take him down, or if he does take him down and can end up here and he can probably finish the fight.

“But then again, I haven’t seen that from Ian either, so it’s really hard to say. I just think on the feet, I think the point-fighting game, I favor Ian Garry. The grappling’s an X-factor.”

Sterling takes on an undefeated opponent of his own at UFC 310 in the 18-0 featherweight Mosvar Evloev.