UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria’s coach has confirmed that Topuria plans to move up to the lightweight division, shedding light on the reasons behind this decision.
Topuria, with a perfect record of 16-0 in MMA and 8-0 in the UFC, raised eyebrows when he expressed interest in facing Charles Oliveira, hinting at leaving the featherweight division. Jorge Climent, Topuria’s head coach, explained that the primary motivation for this potential move is the challenging process of weight cutting in the featherweight division.
“Yeah, the real thing, I think, is he hates to cut weight,” Climent explained during an interview with Submission Radio. “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.”
Topuria, known for his impressive back-to-back knockouts of Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway, has competed once at lightweight, where he delivered a knockout win over Jai Herbert in March 2022. According to Climent, the weight cut down to 145 pounds has increasingly impacted Topuria’s physical condition.
“In the beginning, Ilia was fighting at 61 kilos (bantamweight) when he was young,” Climent noted. “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 85 kilos, and he needs to be 66. We do a very big weight cut.”
Regarding the UFC featherweight title, Topuria had agreed to a rematch with Holloway after knocking him out, intending to run things back with Volkanovski. However, as his days in the featherweight division seem to be nearing an end, Climent believes Topuria might vacate the title altogether.
“I suppose if he goes to another weight class, the belt is going to be vacant,” Climent speculated. “And I don’t know what is going to happen if he doesn’t want to defend it. He left it to the people in this way.”
“I don’t think he’s going to defend the featherweight title. I think he wants to go to lightweight. I don’t think they’ll give him the opportunity to fight directly for the belt, but he wants to fight with the ranked guys to come for the belt.”
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