Ilia Topuria entered the octagon at UFC 317 supremely confident and felt like the outcome of his Charles Oliveira fight was almost a formality in a sense. On Saturday, June 28th, Topuria cemented himself among two division champions throughout UFC history when the former featherweight kingpin captured the lightweight belt after a highlight reel knockout of former 155-pound titleholder Charles Oliveira.
The magnitude of a victory like this, in the International Fight Week headliner no less, is belied by the post-fight demeanour of the Spanish-Georgian mixed martial artist who was surrounded by a team that was assured of this kind of outcome all through the training camp stages. When expounding upon this collective mindset at the post-fight press conference while also giving some insights intom specific moments from his UFC 317 clash, Ilia Topuria said,
"Everyone around me knew that I would do it. Everyone knew it. I just came to collect my belt. I already wore it in the training sessions. I know how hard I work. I know what I’m able to do in sparring. I know how good I am. I know that no one can match my level of skills inside the octagon. I used to prove it that I’m the best fighter in the world."
"I was this close to getting a very dominating position. He did a good scramble there, but I saw in his face that he was hurt and I decided to stand up and finish the fight."
Ilia Topuria could get to 'Jon Jones level', according to former UFC veteran
Ilia Topuria already exists in rarefied air, being that he is now on the tier of two-division UFC champions throughout history, but a statement win in a potential first title defense could get him to the level of Jon Jones according to a former UFC welterweight. This was touched on by Matt Brown during an episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer which also features Damon Martin of MMA Fighting. When touching upon his thought processes in this vein, Brown stated [via MMA Fighting],
“Ilia, to me, is on the verge of we start comparing him to like Jon Jones. To me, if he goes out and beats an Arman [Tsarukyan] or maybe Islam [Makhachev] moves back down or [Ilia] moves up if Islam wins or [he fights Jack] Della Maddalena, we’re starting to talk about Jon Jones level greatness. Start making comparisons, but if he goes out and beats a Paddy [Pimblett], he’ll go back and fight some of the tougher guys after that. Not that Paddy’s not tough, I shouldn’t say that."
"But we know he’ll go back and fight some of those tougher matchups after that at some point. I just want to see it now. The guy’s right on the verge. I looked through some of Jones’ resume, and I was comparing some of the three fight runs that he went on, which he went on an undefeated run, but I’m not sure you compare them to this with Ilia. Maybe hindsight is 20/20, but I don’t know it’s as good as this run that Ilia is on.”
