Ilia Topuria hasn’t won a second title yet and already he’s talking about a third.
That’s the kind of thing you can expect from a man who briefly changed his name to ‘La Leyenda’ before actually achieving legend status. Let’s remember this is the guy who called himself a UFC world champion in the months leading up to his first title fight against Alexander Volkanovski.
And now he’s discussing a potential welterweight fight with Islam Makhachev, should the Dagestani fighter defeat Jack Della Maddalena for the 170 pound belt later this year. If things had played out slightly different, we’d be seeing Topuria and Makhachev face off at UFC 317 in a week. Instead, Islam relinquished his 155 pound belt to chase welterweight gold.
“I wanted to face him because he was the guy who was dominating any everyone in that weight division,” Topuria explained during a media event (video via The Mac Life). “But at the end of the day, I can’t control what they do. The only thing I can control is what I do. So I wanted to move up, I wanted to fight for the title. This is what I’m doing. So he decided to move up also. So I can’t do anything else than go and fight whoever wants to fight me.”
Topuria was respectful when asked whether he thought Makhachev ditched lightweight to avoid him.
“Because he has his own goals,” he replied. “This is what I think.”
And just because Makhachev moved up doesn’t mean a fight can’t eventually happen.
“We’ll see how he does in the welterweight division,” Topuria said. “If he wins the title, I win the title in the lightweight division, maybe I move up or he comes down to the lightweight division, and we have the the fight that everyone wants to see.”
First, Topuria needs to defeat Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 to capture the vacant lightweight title. That fight goes down Saturday, June 28th from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada alongside a flyweight title bout between champ Alexandre Pantoja and Kai Kara-France.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
