Ilia Topuria has the best boxing in MMA, so says Javier Mendez.
Over the past few years, Topuria has ascended to being one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in MMA, primarily on the back of his exceptional striking game. Last year, Topuria became the first person to stop Max Holloway with strikes, knocking him out in his first (and only) featherweight title defense. Then, earlier this year he stopped Charles Oliveira to claim the vacant lightweight title, becoming the first undefeated fighter to win titles in multiple UFC weight classes. And when talking about possible ways to approach a fight against Topuria, American Kickboxing Academy head coach Javier Mendez, was full of praise for the young champion.
“Ilia Topuria, I would say, with him, stay out of boxing range, one million percent,” Mendez the Know Time YouTube channel. “Stay out of boxing range. He’s got the best boxing in the business, in MMA. He’s got it so much that he even thinks he can beat [Terence] Crawford. That’s how confident he is in his boxing. His boxing is good. His boxing is real good. Real good. So he’s got the best boxing in MMA.”
Before moving up to lightweight, Topuria courted a superfight with then-lightweight champion, and Mendez fighter, Islam Makhachev. Instead, Makhachev also moved up to pursue his own second title, though a potential superfight between the two remains at the forefront of many fans’ minds. And if that does end up happening some day, Mendez has a few ideas for how to approach Topuria.
“You’d need to work your kicks, angles with him,” Mendez said. “Knees. Muay Thai would be a good specialty. But your big task is to keep him away from you, and he’s got decent wrestling. So he’s also got, from people I’ve spoken to that train with him, he’s got decent jiu-jitsu also. So he’s almost the complete package, but he’s not. He lacks the kicking area.
“So the weakest link on him would be the kicking area. And then you have to test your grappling on him to see if yours is better than his. We’ve yet to see how great it is. It’s not great, but we’ve yet to see how good it really is.”
Topuria has not fought since winning the lightweight title at UFC 317 in July, however, rumors abound that he will make the first defense of his title early next year. Makhachev, meanwhile, will challenge for the welterweight title at UFC 322 next month.
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