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Ilia Topuria was crowned the new UFC featherweight champion on the weekend at UFC 298 at the Honda Centre in California, ending Volkanovski’s four year title reign via knockout.
Ilia Topuria showed off his ability in the first round having some tight exchanges landing against the former champion, despite a close first round, the judges all had Volkanovski edging the round. With a good start to the second round from both fighters, Topuria continued to rain punches on Volkanovski, when he then rocked him to the cage later on in the round, landing a right hand combination to finish the fight.
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Topuria’s perfect, undefeated record continues as he now remains at (15-0) with 13 wins coming via a finish. The champion’s record in the UFC is now (7-0) after joining the UFC in 2020. In the post fight interview Ilia Topuria was expressing his emotions explaining how much this meant to him. Topuria said, “I feel so happy Joe, I feel so happy right now…everything is possible, look at me, look at me now”.
The champion declared in his post fight press conference he would like to fight his next title bout in his hometown, Spain, If the UFC brought spain to the table for the rematch against Volkanovski “i’m in, lets go, let’s do it”, said Topuria.
The former champion, Volkanovski (26-4) who was said to be one of the greatest featherweight champions ever in the UFC, defended his championship belt 5 times successfully which came to an end in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Volkanovksi has now lost his past two consecutive fights via knockout, with his last fight being taken on 11 days notice against the lightweight champion Islam Makhachev. Volkanovski has failed twice to take the lightweight crown in his chance to be a two division UFC champion.
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Ilia Topuria has plenty of options as to who could be his potential opponent. Yair Rodriguez and Brian Ortega are fighting next weekend on UFC Fight Night, a win for Rodriguez could mean he gets another shot at the title. The champion brought up Conor Mcgregor during his post fight interview with Joe Rogan, “And Conor Mcgregor, if you still have some b****, I will be waiting for you in Spain”.
Conor Mcgregor and Ilia Topuria both had very similar statistics coming into their UFC featherweight title fights, Mcgregor was 27 years old when he fought Jose Aldo for the title back in 2015, Topuria is also 27. Both fighters were also on a 15 win streak and both had (7-0) UFC records.
