Former featherweight champion Ilia Topuria vacated the 145-pound championship to move up to the lightweight division and challenged for a second divisional UFC title. He’ll get that opportunity at UFC 317 but he’s not getting to fight who he wanted.
Topuria wanted to face the top pound-for-pound fighter Islam Makhachev but Makhachev relinquished the lightweight title to move up to the welterweight division for the same reasons Topuria changed weight classes. Topuria considers Makhachev a ‘hypocrite’ and believes the Dagestan fighter ran from a fight.
“(Islam) is the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever seen,” Topuria recently said in a press conference (h/t Marca, Championship Rounds). “He said he didn’t want to give me the opportunity because I was the little guy, and now the little guy is the one looking for the same opportunity I was looking for. How are you going to criticize my decision when you’re doing the same thing right now? I’ve never seen more hypocrisy in my life.”
Topuria has no intentions of chasing a fight with Makhachev in the welterweight division.
“Why chase him?,” Topuria said. “If someone runs away, you don’t have to bully them. If he runs away, we have to let him get away. I don’t want to fight people who don’t want to fight me either.”
Topuria faces former lightweight champion Charles Oliveira for the vacant lightweight title in the UFC 317 main event on June 28. Makhachev is expected to fight newly crowned welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena later this year.
