This week it’s emerged that UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria and welterweight kingpin Islam Makhachev were being lined up as the main event for the UFC: White House event on June 14th, but Makhachev dropped out just a day before the card was announced and so Topuria now fights Justin Gaethje in the headliner instead.

Now the blame game has began, with Topuria confirming that the fight had been in the works, and accuses Makhachev of ducking the chance to fight him.

“Once again Islam comes up with an excuse,” Topuria wrote on X. “This time it’s an injury. I always knew I would be part of the White House event. Even when the UFC told me at one point that they wouldn’t count on me for the event, I knew it was part of the negotiation.

“When they finally told me I would be on the White House card, they mentioned Islam and I didn’t hesitate for a second to accept the fight. Even though the fight hadn’t been officially confirmed yet, the White House card was going to be announced the next day. And when I woke, I found out that Islam had gotten injured. And then Justin Gaethje appeared.

“Once again, someone else who will pay for Islam’s escape. Both of their manager is a bitch and also ugly as hell. Justin, see you at the White House. I’m not someone who humiliates people. It will be quick. When you wake up, everything will already be over.“

Topuria had previously vacated the featherweight title in the hopes of challenging Makhachev for the lightweight belt, only for his rival to move up to welterweight instead, where he defeated Jack Della Maddalena to claim his second title.

However, Makhachev insists that he’s not intentionally avoiding his rival, and hints that it was in fact Topuria who backed out of the fight.

“We both know who chickened out here,” Makhachev wrote. “You can cover your cowardice with nasty tweets, but don’t worry, one day you’ll get what you asked for! And your fat ass manager don’t have to ask for billions to fight me, we’ll do it for free.”

So, while it’s up for debate who caused the fight negotiations to collapse, it seems that both fighters are pretty clear that they were in talks for it to happen.

However, Dana White has muddied the waters by claiming that they weren’t even trying to make that fight.

“That’s not true, it was never Islam vs. Topuria,” White told reporter Mike Bohn when asked about reporters from Marca in Spain at the start of the week about that fight having fallen through. “Don’t worry about what fights are being made. We announce which ones are made and which ones will be happening.”

It’s not clear why White and the two fighters in question appear to have differing versions of what went down, but one thing he did confirm is comments from Justin Gaethje that he had been told he wouldn’t be fighting on Thursday, only to then be told otherwise a day later.

White didn’t go into specifics about what actually happened, other than to say it was due to to, “some weird circumstances.”