Ilia Topuria won\u2019t be fighting in the first half of 2026, but based on recent interviews he\u2019s still going to be doing a lot of talking.<\/p>\n
Topuria announced last month that he was taking a step back<\/a> from defending his lightweight title to deal with a nasty divorce that currently has accusations of extortion<\/a> and domestic abuse swirling around it. Topuria has asked that the world respect his privacy in this time and thus far, a lot of lightweight contenders are doing that.<\/p>\n But the dam may not hold if he continues to go out and give interviews talking mad s–t about said contenders. In a sit down recorded last week as part of his WOW MMA promotion,<\/a> Topuria blasted welterweight champ Islam Makhachev.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone knows this is the fight people want, but for some reason he hasn\u2019t accepted it,\u201d Topuria said to ElDobermanMMA of Makhachev. \u201cHe talks too much. It\u2019s very easy to talk from thousands of kilometers away, to judge and criticize me. When you\u2019re in the octagon with me, you\u2019ll realize I\u2019m not Jack Della Maddalena or Dan Hooker. When my right hand lands, you\u2019re going to have a very long sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re so cocky and arrogant, I would really love to submit [Islam] in front of [Khabib],\u201d Topuria concluded. \u201cAnd if Khabib wants to step in afterward, I\u2019ll gladly step on his head too.\u201d<\/p>\n That roused the attention of Makhachev\u2019s manager Ali Abdelaziz, who fired back suggesting any truce regarding Ilia\u2019s personal matters would not hold if he kept being disrespectful.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a little bit confused,\u201d Abdelaziz tweeted. \u201cEverybody giving this guy space and respect to resolve his family problems. And should be. But when he come out talking about Khabib, Islam, Arman, for no reason. And he\u2019s not even fighting. I\u2019m not sure if people should give him a pass anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Considering Abdelaziz runs<\/a> many of his clients\u2019 X (formerly Twitter) accounts, we could see a sudden increase in cheap shots towards Topuria. We don\u2019t know how well that would work out for anyone. Ali infamously trash talked Magomed \u201cBig Ank\u201d Ankalaev\u2019s reputation into the toilet<\/a> during the Russian\u2019s feud with Alex Pereira. He\u2019s not exactly good at reading the temperature of any given situation and we expect Bryce Mitchell-level nukes<\/a> to start flying at any point.<\/p>\n In the end, the Dominance MMA head just wants Topuria to shut up about his fighters, especially if Topuria wants everyone to shut their mouths about his divorce. But Topuria never said anything about being nice to everyone, he just said family should be left out of it \u2014 a simple enough distinction. Let\u2019s see if Abdelaziz gets it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Topuria won\u2019t be fighting in the first half of 2026, but based on recent interviews he\u2019s still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":["post-364588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364588","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=364588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}