Ilia Topuria has been one of the biggest success stories in the UFC in the last few years. The 28-year-old joined the UFC in 2020 and since then has been on a roll. Many consider the 28-year-old to be the next face of the business. However, it’s far from being a unanimous opinion.
Fans often accuse Topuria of trying to copy Conor McGregor. From the chest and back tattoos and the way he dresses to snatching his opponent’s belt during a press conference, there are surely similarities between the two. But Topuria has a lot to his personality outside of these traits.
More importantly, he’s a brilliant fighter. Topuria has fought eight times in the UFC. The 28-year-old has been on an unbeaten run. But the most important part of his career so far started in December 2022 when Topuria moved back to the featherweight division. He fought Bryce Mitchell and won the fight in the second round via submission.
In February 2024, he fought Alexander Volkanovski to win the UFC Featherweight title. In October 2024, he defended his title against Max Holloway in a fight that ended in a knockout win in the third round. Since then, there has been a lot of anticipation about Topuria’s next fight. However, the Featherweight Champion has something else in his mind.
Topuria is now trying to do what all the other greats of the game have done, move up to a different weight class. He doesn’t believe there’s anything left for him to conquer in the featherweight division and has decided to move to the lightweight division. In doing so, he has vacated his title. But there’s still no fight scheduled for Topuria.
Dana White says an announcement is coming soon for Ilia Topuria
Topuria moving to lightweight after vacating his title has created several potential rivalries already. He has exchanged some words with Paddy Pimblett. The English fighter would love to have an opportunity to try out his skills against the former featherweight champion. However, there’s no official word yet on the Paddy fight or any other fight for that matter.
During a recent media conversation before UFC London, Dana White was asked about Ilia Topuria’s next opponent. White said, “Still working on the plan for him. We should have some announcements about him, give us a couple more weeks and we’ll have some concrete plans for him.”
“As of right now, that is true, he is vacating and moving up and we’ll figure out the rest in the next couple of weeks,” White concluded. While White works his magic to set up a fight for Topuria, Jorge Masvidal has a suggestion.
On Adversity Kings, he said, “I think he would flatline Gaethje. He’ll put Gaethje in a coma… They don’t wanna see him end their poster boy Gaethje like that.” It’ll be interesting to see if Justin Gaethje will respond to Masvidal or challenge Topuria.
