Last Monday night, Ilia Topuria left all mixed martial arts fans in shock. In an interview with Juanma Castaño on ‘El Partidazo’ on the Cope network, he assured that “surely” we had already seen his last fight at the UFC featherweight, claiming that he was tired of the weight cuts, and that he was already looking back. definitively to the highest weight, the light one (155 pounds or 70.3 kilos). In addition, he continued targeting April or May as possible dates to return to the most famous octagon in the world.
All the alarms went off, having practically accepted his next challenge at featherweight when, after knocking out Max Holloway, Alexander Volkanovski climbed into the cage to ‘verbally’ close this rematch, since Topuria was the one who took the belt from the Australian last time. month of February. In fact, El Matador even stated in the aforementioned program that his target was the current UFC lightweight champion, Islam Makhachev, but since he has a fight scheduled in January against Arman Tsarukyan, he would go for the first on the list. of 155-pound contenders, Brazilian Charles Oliveira.
It might sound a little strange that Topuria, who has only made one defense of his world title, would abandon his belt to immediately go up to lightweight, since the economic advantages of being a champion are too great. Thus, this Thursday night, he wanted to clarify the situation, reducing the intensity of the statements made previously. «I will not leave the title vacant. The decision to advance to the next category is completely mine. I haven’t had any conversations with the UFC yet, so everything is yet to be decided. Stop celebrating because I’m not going anywhere. I have conquered my division and I will do the same in the next one,” said Topuria.
I will not leave the title vacant. The decision to move up to the next category is entirely mine. I haven’t had any conversations with the UFC yet, so everything is still to be decided. Stop celebrating because I’m not going anywhere. I have conquered my division and I will do…
— Ilia Topuria (@Topuriailia) December 12, 2024
Without a doubt, this means lowering the tone somewhat, although not the pretensions, since Topuria’s objective is to move away from the brutal weight cuts that it has to make to reach the 65.7 kilograms required by the category of which it is the monarch. His ability to expand his legacy, his team considers, involves looking for big names in the lightweight division such as the aforementioned Makhachev and Oliveira and others such as Dustin Poirier or Arman Tsarukyan could even appear.
