ESPN<\/a>. \u201cHe did a mistake when he was supposed to fight with me. He was injured, he did not come to weigh in, but he\u2019s still No. 1 in the division and he have to fight for the title.<\/p>\n\u201cMaybe Arman, maybe Gaethje, but not Paddy, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makhachev was supposed to fight Tsarukyan at UFC 311 this past January, but Tsarukyan withdrew due to a back injury and was replaced at the last-minute by Renato Moicano, who Makhachev submitted inside of a round. The following May, Makhachev officially announced a move to welterweight to challenge Jack Della Maddalena, with that bout now scheduled for UFC 322 on Nov. 15.<\/p>\n
Topuria, after vacating a featherweight title, knocked out Charles Oliveira at UFC 317 to win the lightweight belt, and afterwards was confronted by Pimblett inside the octagon. Dana White has not announced plans for a Topuria vs. Pimblett fight, and despite Pimblett owning a 7-0 UFC record, Makhachev is on the same page as the UFC CEO.<\/p>\n
\u201cPaddy beat who?\u201d Makhachev said. \u201cTony Ferguson? Who else he beat? [Michael] Chandler? Everybody beat Chandler.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can do some things, but I don\u2019t see a big chance,\u201d Makhachev said of Pimblett\u2019s skill set. \u201cI don\u2019t know, maybe, honestly it\u2019s not a big challenge for Topuria. Arman is a really big deal. If he beats Arman, because Arman has good skills striking, wrestling, grappling, he\u2019s a good fighter. Paddy, nobody checked Paddy before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makhachev is currently fully focused on Della Maddalena, but as long as he and Topuria are within one weight class of one another, fans will speculate on a potential superfight between the rivals. That talk is fine for Makhachev, who hasn\u2019t closed the door on settling the score with Topuria, especially given the potential magnitude of the contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to be next for Ilia,\u201d Makhachev said. \u201cIf you\u2019re talking about our fight, I have a good fight now and I know he\u2019s going to fight soon and we\u2019ll see what\u2019s going to happen. He wants to fight at the White House and I also want to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the MMA community, it\u2019s going to be a big fight,\u201d he added. \u201cPeople want this fight and if UFC wants this fight, then we can do this. \u2026 I know UFC wants to do some big fight in White House. Which fight is going to be bigger than this?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Pimblett won\u2019t be fighting for a title anytime soon if it\u2019s up to Islam Makhachev. The former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-244624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244624","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=244624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}