UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria is ending the year with the bombshell news that he might not be sticking around in the sport for much longer before moving on to pursue his boxing ambitions.
“It’s no secret that I’ve always wanted to try my hand at boxing,” Topuria told Marca. “But I think something I’ve always applied to my life is that if you try to catch two rabbits, you end up catching neither. So, I want to finish my story in mixed martial arts, in MMA, first, and once I’m done, then make my complete transition to boxing. I can’t be preparing for an MMA fight, then leave, prepare for a boxing match, come back… I don’t think that would be very professional, would it?
“Because boxing requires a completely different approach, very, very, very different training that I have to adapt to. Obviously, the timing is different, and well, it’s not even an octagon; it’s a ring, and I would have to adapt to that, which takes time, like everything in life. So, right now, in mixed martial arts, when I finish—which I don’t think will be too long, to be honest—I’ll make my transition to boxing, and I’m going to surprise more than a few people.”
However, Topuria didn’t give much clarity when pressed about how much longer he thinks he has left in MMA.
“In active sports, I still have… now, what I have left in mixed martial arts, well, I don’t know, to be honest, it’s like… it depends,” Topuria said. “It depends on many things; it depends on how circumstances develop. But well, we’ll try to stay active as long as possible.”
That being said, the 28-year-old did reveal that he still has ambitions to become a three-division UFC champion, which appears to be further fuelled by his desire to fight his pound-for-pound rival Islam Makhachev, who currently holds the welterweight title.
“I don’t know, nobody knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, I don’t know,” Topuria said. “That’s what’s fun, what’s complicated, and that’s where the struggle lies, isn’t it? What’s going to be next? And when you sometimes want to delve too deeply into that journey, that’s when the uncertainties, the doubts, the fears appear… so I’ve learned to focus on what I have in the near future.
“Obviously, I also have long-term plans, but right now, what I can do is focus on that triple crown, do my best, and then we’ll see what the future holds for us.”
All this isn’t great news for the UFC given that Topuria is a leading light for the promotion at a time when genuine star power has become harder to find, and had looked like being a major player for many years to come.
And we’ve seen this story play out in the past as Conor McGregor’s journey was similar in that he too won both the featherweight and lightweight titles before competing up at welterweight and then testing himself in boxing at the highest level.
Of course that proved to be a cautionary tale in the end as McGregor’s one-and-only boxing match against Floyd Mayweather Jr in 2017 marked the beginning of his fall from grace, having gone on to lose three of his four fights since returning to the UFC.
On the other hand, another UFC great Anderson Silva often spoke of his desire to compete in boxing, but despite coming close to fighting Roy Jones Jr several times, in the end he didn’t actually compete in the squared circle until many years later after his UFC run came to a natural conclusion.
Only time will tell what will happen with Topuria, but hopefully he has at least a few big UFC fights left in him before he looks to go anywhere else.
