Ilia Topuria added another legend to his incredible run of knockouts at UFC 317.
Topuria has climbed to the top of the pound-for-pound list after winning three consecutive title fights against some of the sport’s biggest names.
‘El Matador’ treated his vacant lightweight title fight as a formality before stepping inside the Octagon and doing exactly what he said he would do by stopping Charles Oliveira in the first round.
With a 17-0 record, no one has been able to solve the puzzle that the undefeated champion presents but a former opponent of his believes that he spotted a potential weakness this past weekend in Las Vegas.
Alexander Volkanovski doesn’t have any intentions of running it back with Topuria at this stage but if the fight did happen, he’d approach it differently.
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Alexander Volkanovski believes that Charles Oliveira’s grappling attempts had an effect on Ilia Topuria
At UFC 298, Ilia Topuria became the featherweight champion by stopping Alexander Volkanovski in the second round to end his opponent’s incredible title reign.
Volkanovski has since reclaimed the title and while there was talk of him facing ‘El Matador’ for a second time at one stage, this fizzled out once his former foe dropped the 145-pound belt to move up a division.
During a recent appearance on the FLAGRANT podcast, ‘The Great’ was asked how he would change his approach for a rematch.
Volkanovski immediately joked, having been knocked out the first time around, that he’d wrestle more if given another opportunity.
However, Volkanovski also believes that due to one moment in Topuria’s fight with Charles Oliveira, this could be a potential flaw in the lightweight champion that hasn’t been exposed yet.
“You want to see what’s going to happen with his gas tank… We want to see the gas tank. See what happens there because I thought Charles when he was taking him down and forcing the wrestling and the grappling, I felt like it was starting to wear on him a little bit. So even when he ended up on top when they grappled, I don’t know if you remember, Ilia gets up and then he was just staying up and kicking him, didn’t let him up. He waited. ‘I’m going to wait 30 seconds, kick his legs, get my breath back.'”
At the same time, Volkanovski admitted that this is much easier said than done because of the power that Topuria possesses once you get close to him.
“You want to catch him coming in because he wants to commit as well but there’s that danger of him landing as well.”
Ilia Topuria laughed off the idea of fighting Alexander Volkanovski for a second time following UFC 317
After winning the lightweight title, Ilia Topuria is targeting several opponents that he hasn’t faced before.
There are some huge fights at 155-pounds for the new champion who also wants to test himself at welterweight at some stage in his career.
‘El Matador’ clearly has no plans on returning to featherweight but at the post-fight press conference following UFC 317, he was asked whether he’d be open to a rematch with Alexander Volkanovski at lightweight.
Topuria dismissed the idea with the kind of cold blooded line that fans have become accustomed to from the undefeated star.
“No, no, no, no. We don’t want to do that to Volk.”