Earlier this week, Ilia Topuria shockingly revealed that he has likely fought his last fight in the UFC featherweight division and that he plans to move up to the lightweight division in 2025 to take on the division’s former champion, Charles Oliveira. Despite ‘El Matador’ seeming adamant that he has fought his last fight at 145lbs, he did not give a specific reason as to why he is pushing to move up in weight and there has also been no word from the UFC in an official capacity on whether or not he is going to be making the move up.
In a newly released interview with Submission Radio, Topuria’s coach, Jorge Climent, has revealed the real reason why his fighter is pushing to vacate the title he has only held for 10 months.
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Tough Weight Cuts the Reason Ilia Topuria Wants to Move to Lightweight Coach Reveals
Topuria’s coach spoke to Submission Radio and opened up about his struggles getting down to 145lbs
Ilia Topuria expressing his desire to vacate his UFC featherweight title and move up to the lightweight division shocked MMA fans as not only is he just 10 months into his reign as champion, but he is coming off back-to-back wins over the two greatest featherweight fighters ever, Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway. Despite the news coming as a shock to many, it now makes a lot of sense.
Topuria’s coach, Jorge Climent, sat down with Submission Radio and revealed the real reason why his fighter is targeting a move up to 155lbs to compete in super-fights against Islam Makhachev and Charles Oliveira.
“Yeah, the real thing, I think, is he hates to cut weight. He does it a lot of times, and it’s very hard every time we do it. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, and that’s why he wants to go up to the next weight class, you know, because he thinks his normal weight is in that weight class.”
Every time he steps on the scale at 145lbs, Topuria does look fatigued and drained, however, he has previously competed at bantamweight, which is 10lbs lighter than featherweight, so he has a history of dealing with tough weight cuts well. Despite his history of cutting down to bantamweight, Topuria’s coach has revealed that his body has changed and he now walks around at a pretty staggering weight for the division he is in.
“And your body is changing. When you’re 20, you have a body. When you’re 25, you have another. And when you are 30, you have another. Always your muscular production (grows) and your weight is difficult to cut. We decided because he wants to feel better. Sometimes I see Ilia at 85kg, and he needs to be 66. We do a very big weight cut.”
For context to Topuria’s coaches’ quotes, 85kg is around 187lbs, which means his out-of-camp weight is similar to what Israel Adesanya cuts down to when he fights and is a weight which Alex Pereira, who is 6’4 and now fights at light heavyweight once cut down to many times. ‘El Matador’ does have a history of fighting at 155lbs which is the weight he wants to move to but it is hard to believe that he walks around at a weight which the likes of big and tall fighters such as Adesanya and Pereira have been at whilst actively competing at featherweight.
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Ilia Topuria’s professional MMA record (as of 12.12.24) |
||
|---|---|---|
|
16 Fights |
16 Wins |
0 Losses |
|
By Knockout |
6 |
0 |
|
By Submission |
8 |
0 |
|
By Decision |
2 |
0 |
Ilia Topuria Reveals He Will Not Vacate Featherweight Title In Newly Released Statement
Despite stating he wanted to vacate his title earlier this week, Topuria has shot down talk of him vacating the featherweight title
Despite all the talk around a potential move to lightweight, Ilia Topuria has shot down talk of him vacating his UFC featherweight title.
Topuria posted the following statement on X:
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