Ilia Topuria is making no excuses for his loss to Justin Gaethje after absorbing a ton of damage before his coaches threw in the towel after the fourth round in the UFC White House main event.<\/p>\n
In his first statement since leaving the octagon and getting sent straight to the hospital for treatment, the now former UFC lightweight champion paid homage to Gaethje for a job well done. Prior to the fight, Gaethje promised he was going to dish out a whole lot of punishment and Topuria admitted afterwards that\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cJustin, congratulations. You said you\u2019d leave your mark on my face\u2026 and you did,\u201d Topuria wrote on Instagram. \u201cYou took the sight from my right eye in the first round, and by the end of the second, from my left too.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo excuses. I had one of the best camps of my life. I came in sharp, prepared, and ready. Last night was your night. That\u2019s the nature of this game. Glory and pain walk side by side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Topuria got off to a fast start and nearly scored a finish in the second round but Gaethje gutted his way through a tough situation to survive until the final horn.<\/p>\n
On the restart in the third, Gaethje completely took over, dropping Topuria to the canvas and busting up both of his eyes to the point where the ringside physician nearly stopped the contest.<\/p>\n
The fight continued and Topuria found his second wind but he was still eating a lot of shots as Gaethje just kept coming after him in every exchange. In the final second of the fourth round, Gaethje blasted Topuria with a huge knee to the ribs on the ground.<\/p>\n
Topuria hobbled back to his corner and his coaches saw enough to stop the fight to prevent him from any further harm. The fight served as the first loss of Topuria\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
While he didn\u2019t reveal the nature of any injuries suffered in the fight, Topuria vowed to come back better when he\u2019s cleared to fight again and he obviously hopes to cross paths with Gaethje in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll heal. I\u2019ll rest. And I\u2019ll return stronger, wiser, and far more dangerous,\u201d Topuria said. \u201cAnd trust me\u2026 this story between us is far from over. We will have our rematch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Topuria is making no excuses for his loss to Justin Gaethje after absorbing a ton of damage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738582,"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-738581","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\/738581","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=738581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}