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Ilia Topuria celebrates his championship victory against Alexander Volkanovski during UFC 298 at Honda Center in Anaheim on February 17, 2024. \u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n
Islam Makhachev\u2019s coach Javier Mendez has identified the weak point of Ilia Topuria ahead of his potential superfight.<\/p>\n
Topuria has become one of the biggest stars in all of mixed martial arts today following his knockout victory against Charles Oliveira in June to capture the lightweight belt.<\/p>\n
\u2018El Matador\u2019 has an impressive record with 17 consecutive victories and UFC titles in two different divisions.<\/p>\n
The former featherweight champion is hoping to get a chance and make history by winning third belt at welterweight division.<\/p>\n
However, he has to wait for Jack Della Maddalena and Islam Makhachev battle at UFC 322 on November 15.<\/p>\n
Javier Mendez the coach of Islam Makhachev appears to have already started preparing for a potential fight against Ilia Topuria.<\/p>\n
Mendez was recently asked about his game plan against Topuria to which he replied that he will keep his fighter out of \u2018El Matator\u2019 boxing range.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say with him, stay out of boxing range, 1 million percent,\u201d he told the Know Time podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got the best boxing in the business in MMA. He even thinks he can beat [Terence] Crawford, that\u2019s how confident he is in his boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also praised Topuria\u2019s wrestling and Jiu Jitsu skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour big task is to keep him away from you. And he\u2019s got decent wrestling. From people I\u2019ve spoken to who have trained with him, he\u2019s got decent jiu jitsu also,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Mendez also revealed the weakness of Topuria where he can be trap saying he is almost complete package but his weakest link is the kicking area and grappling.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, he\u2019s almost the complete package, but he\u2019s not, he lacks in the kicking area,\u201d Mendez explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe weakest link on him would be the kicking area, and then you have to test your grappling with him to see if yours is better than his. We\u2019ve yet to see how great it is. It\u2019s not great, but we\u2019ve yet to see how good it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Topuria celebrates his championship victory against Alexander Volkanovski during UFC 298 at Honda Center in Anaheim on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,17499,27140,38927,38928,137998,785,85,1638,787],"class_list":["post-228337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-ilia-topuria","tag-islam-makhachev","tag-javier-mendez","tag-makhachev","tag-mendez","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-topuria","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228337","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=228337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}