{"id":531013,"date":"2026-03-10T12:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T12:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/531013\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T12:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T12:28:07","slug":"ufc-tried-to-lowball-ilia-topuria-during-last-minute-white-house-negotiations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/531013\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC tried to lowball Ilia Topuria during last-minute White House negotiations"},"content":{"rendered":"

We still don\u2019t know half of what went on with how the UFC White House card was booked, but the half we do know now is pretty wild.<\/p>\n

Following the \u2019big\u2019 announcement<\/a> at UFC 326, Justin Gaethje admitted he didn\u2019t know he was on the card until hours before the reveal. The next day, UFC CEO Dana White admitted Justin Gaethje vs. Ilia Topuria wasn\u2019t originally supposed to be on the card, and they\u2019d even discussed Topuria vs. Islam Makhachev.<\/a> That didn\u2019t happen due to a Makhachev hand injury.<\/p>\n

According to Topuria\u2019s manager Malki Kawa, the UFC got in touch four days before the announcement to probe the situation and then disappeared after he let them know how much it would cost to get \u201cEl Matador\u201d in the cage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWednesday I got asked, \u2018Would you guys want to do this or that?\u2019\u201d Kawa told MMA Fighting.<\/a> \u201cAnd we said, \u2018Absolutely.\u2019 They gave us a number. We said, \u2018Absolutely not.\u2019 And then we didn\u2019t hear anything after that. So, to me, there was no fight going on as of Wednesday afternoon. They couldn\u2019t get there and it fell apart, so then they moved on to other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201dNow, one thing I will say though is, I do believe when I got that call on Wednesday, they were talking to everybody. That\u2019s why when [Dana] says these guys weren\u2019t supposed to be on the card, I believe that. Because even the way it was said to me, \u2018Who do you want to fight? You guys can fight this guy, you guys can fight that guy,\u2019 the money that was offered was small in comparison to what we had already said we wanted to fight those guys from before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it was White House card, International Fight Week or it\u2019s next week, it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d Kawa continued. \u201cIt was more about getting the numbers. And when the numbers came, it was more like, \u2018If this fight could happen, here\u2019s the numbers that you guys down for.\u2019 And we\u2019re like, \u2018Not at those numbers.\u2019 So there was no fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

This sounds similar to what happened with Jon Jones: the UFC approached him and asked him if he was interested, and he said, \u2018Yes, at this price.\u2019 And according to Jones, the UFC \u2018low-balled\u2019 him.<\/a> \u201cBones\u201d is now asking the promotion to release him.<\/p>\n

Things clearly worked out for Ilia Topuria, though. Not only is he on the card, he\u2019s in the main event spot above the Alex Pereira vs. Ciryl Gane interim heavyweight title fight, despite being a lighter weightclass champion. That\u2019s not how things normally work in the UFC, and points towards Ilia getting his way in negotiations.<\/p>\n

While Topuria\u2019s manager didn\u2019t divulge too many details, he did imply the UFC\u2019s rushed negotiations and need to announce the fights at UFC 326 was to his client\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t have a deal in place, and then you\u2019re talking about you\u2019re going to announce something Saturday and the announcement is related to our negotiation?\u201d he said. \u201cAbsolutely, I think we the advantage was ours.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We still don\u2019t know half of what went on with how the UFC White House card was booked,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396,125620],"class_list":["post-531013","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","tag-ufc-white-house-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531013","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=531013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}