Ilia Topuria likely won’t go back and watch Islam Makhachev’s title win over Jack Della Maddalena any time soon — at least, from a fan’s perspective.
Makhachev captured his second divisional world title with a lopsided unanimous decision win over Della Maddalena to become the welterweight champion in the main event of UFC 322. Topuria, the current lightweight champion, has been calling for a fight with Makhachev for over a year, and after watching the UFC’s most recent pay-per-view main event, “El Matador” was not quite entertained.
“Honestly, I was very disappointed in his performance,” Topuria told Alvaro Colmenero. “But more than his performance, the one that disappointed more was the performance of the former champion Jack Della Maddalena. Honestly, I saw him putting up zero resistance. He seemed completely unwilling to even be in the fight.
”In the end, Islam did his job — what he always does, fight super boring. He doesn’t care about the audience, which isn’t how I see or project myself in this sport because I always strive to entertain everyone, so that when people invest their time and resources to see me they are very happy with their investment.”
Topuria captured the lightweight title in his lone 2025 appearance with a brutal knockout of Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 in June. Topuria vacated the featherweight title in hopes to fight Makhachev for the 155-pound belt, but Makhachev had the same idea of making his own history.
Both Topuria and Makhachev have a slew of contenders waiting for their shot, but Topuria hopes the UFC will pull the trigger on a champ vs. champ matchup. Should that happen, it won’t be until April the earliest with Topuria recently announcing he is taking a brief break from competition to focus on personal matters.
On Thursday, the UFC announced Justin Gaethje vs. Paddy Pimblett for an interim lightweight title is set to headline 324 on Jan. 24. The winner of that bout is expected to face Topuria later in 2026. Prior to that announcement, Topuria was still optimistic a matchup with Makhachev could be booked.
”Hopefully [me vs. Islam] happens,” Topuria said. “I think it would be a high-level fight that people would really enjoy. They would see a very desperate Islam trying to get a dominant position and catch his breath, and they would see me with a lot of spark to put him to sleep — which in the end, I would achieve.”
Subscribe to my channel
