Ilia Topuria may be the UFC\u2019s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter, but that hasn\u2019t stopped him from repeatedly calling out Terence Crawford for a boxing match, especially after watching him dismantle Canelo Alvarez this past Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The war of words between them has continued to escalate with Crawford effectively dismissing Topuria<\/a>, which further enraged the reigning UFC lightweight king as he promises to silence the new three-division undisputed boxing champion<\/a> should they ever meet. There\u2019s little doubt in an MMA contest Topuria would be a massive favorite to beat Crawford, but the same can\u2019t be said about a boxing match according to UFC legend Matt Brown.<\/p>\n \u201cTopuria has to train all the skills. Kicks, knees, elbows, takedowns, grappling, cage work,\u201d Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cTerence has only trained his hands, however many years. I know he wrestled in high school or some shit like that.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a fair fight when you\u2019re taking away all your other weapons. You\u2019re essentially saying I can beat you in an unfair fight \u2014 unfair for me \u2014 and I can beat you with the cards stacked against me. That\u2019s a tough one to believe. It\u2019s a tough buy-in.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown admits because it\u2019s a fight and Topuria is arguably the best of the best in the UFC currently, you can\u2019t completely count him out. Stranger things have happened \u2014 including former UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou scoring a knockdown against Tyson Fury before ultimately losing a razor-close decision in his boxing debut.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the factor that Brown can\u2019t completely ignore even if realistically he doesn\u2019t see a path to victory for Topuria over Crawford.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think he stands a chance but people do f*cking amazing things in this world and it blows us away sometimes.\u201d Brown said. \u201cWhat Francis [Ngannou] did blew me the f*ck away. I\u2019d hate putting it past him. It\u2019s silly for anybody to be like of course he\u2019s going to win that fight, he\u2019s f*cking Ilia Topuria! He knows how to fight. It\u2019s ridiculous.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an unfair fight. It\u2019s literally an unfair fight. He doesn\u2019t train his hands as much as Crawford does so it\u2019s completely unfair. But I guess that\u2019s just me with my little optimistic, positive self-talk person there. I\u2019d love to see a top MMA guy go and beat a top boxer. I would just love it. It\u2019s just not going to happen most likely.\u201d<\/p>\n The only other time a UFC fighter at this level ventured into boxing was the 2017 showdown between then two-division champion Conor McGregor and undefeated legend Floyd Mayweather.<\/p>\n The lead-up to the event was electric, with McGregor and Mayweather sharing a world tour that produced more than a few classic moments as the fighters engaged in a war of words for the ages. But the fight itself played out in fairly lopsided fashion with Mayweather biding his time until he started picking McGregor apart before scoring a TKO finish in the 10th round.<\/p>\n Brown knew from the jump McGregor didn\u2019t have any chance to actually threaten Mayweather in a boxing match, and the same can be said for Topuria challenging Crawford.<\/p>\n The biggest difference was McGregor and Mayweather turned their fight into a spectacle and Brown just see Topuria vs. Crawford having that same appeal.<\/p>\n \u201cRealistically we got excited about the Conor fight because it was Conor\u2019s shit talk and Floyd is good at responding to the shit talk and get at shit talking himself,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThe drama was the interest there. At least us in the know.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only people saying Conor had a chance were the f*cking noobs. These people that started watching when Conor started rising in the UFC. Those were the people picking [him].\u201d<\/p>\n As unlikely as it seems Topuria ever gets his wish, Brown can\u2019t fault him for chasing his dream and probably a hefty paycheck to boot.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking about it, and that\u2019s what they want,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThat\u2019s what Topuria wants, we\u2019re talking about him. More power to him. Keep believing, and if he can get that f*cking payday, I hope he does.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a>0 Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Topuria may be the UFC\u2019s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter, but that hasn\u2019t stopped him from repeatedly calling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,1347,45518,1591,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-159064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-latest-news","tag-mmaf-podcast-network","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}