TMZ<\/a> that the promotion reached out to him asking about the possibility, but then changed plans before he was able to pass the offer along to the welterweight champion. In the end, Topuria will unify the lightweight belts on the June 14 card against interim titleholder Justin Gaethje, another fighter managed by Abdelaziz.<\/p>\n\u201cI got called about Ilia to fight Islam,\u201d Abdelaziz said. \u201cIt was middle of the day, Islam was sleeping, and I was excited about it. And after that, I got called back and said, \u2018Never mind, the fight is not gonna happen.\u2019 Before even I talked with Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Topuria\u2019s manager Malki Kawa recently revealed they did not like the money that was offered by the UFC to make the champion vs. champion showdown, and Abdelaziz poked at them by calling it was a tactic to avoid the fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what I know is so many ways to turn down a fight,\u201d Abdelaziz said. \u201cI can say, \u2018I\u2019m gonna fight Francis Ngannou, give me $50 million,\u2019 right? I don\u2019t blame anyone for trying to make the most money they can because I believe Ilia and Islam is the biggest fight the UFC can make. I think this fight should happen this year. But in a way, does Ilia really want it? Because if he wanted, two things gonna happen. He has to vacate his lightweight title \u2014 I don\u2019t think he wanted to do that, and I don\u2019t blame him too because he just won it, right? But everybody else did and he\u2019s nothing special. He\u2019s just like anybody else.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he wants to be paid a lot of money. I can\u2019t knock him down for this lot of money. But also, I can say certain kind of numbers to turn the UFC off. [Can] the UFC afford, can they pay in this number? Of course, they have a lot of money. They can pay any numbers they want. If they really want the fight, a big enough important for them, right? But in reality, I didn\u2019t even get to Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still according to Abdelaziz, there was an option on the table to strip Topuria of the belt and book Gaethje vs. Arman Tsarukyan for the undisputed championship on the White House event had Topuria declined the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was going to fight Arman Tsarukyan for the undisputed time,\u201d Abdelaziz said. \u201cThis is what I was being told by the UFC. I don\u2019t know the numbers, but also I do not blame Ilia and his team to try to make the most money they can. I get it. I understand. But this is honestly the truth. That\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makhachev\u2019s manager said the UFC went a different direction following that brief conversation, planning a welterweight title defense for mid-2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd after that, Islam got offered a different fight, at welterweight, to be the main event. And Islam said, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s do this in July,\u2019\u201d Abdelaziz said. \u201cHe has some stuff going on, Dana [White] speak about it. But I can tell you this. If this fight was offered in June, and Islam even have on one leg, he would have [done] the fight. But in a way Islam already has a fight in the summer, we have a welterweight No. 1 contender match against someone. It\u2019s a done deal already, and the UFC will announce it probably soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear who will be the first to challenge Makhachev for the 170-pound title. Jack Della Maddalena is the current No. 1 ranked fighter on the official UFC list, but he just lost the belt to Makhachev and is slated to face Carlos Prates on May 2 in Perth, Australia. The most likely options are Ian Machado Garry or Michael Morales, with former champion Kamaru Usman an underdog for the title shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A potential superfight between welterweight champion Islam Makchachev and lightweight champion Ilia Topuria was never actually close to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563695,"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-563694","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\/563694","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=563694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}