Undefeated UFC lightweight champion and former featherweight titleholder Ilia Topuria has quickly evolved into the face of the world’s premier MMA organization. <\/p>\n
Topuria has proven to be a pound-for-pound star by showing off his prolific boxing skills and consecutively knocking out future Hall of Fame fighters Alexander Volkanovski, Max Halloway and Charles Oliveira.<\/p>\n
As synergy continues to build<\/a> between the UFC and boxing due to Dana White’s involvement with TKO\u2019s recently launched Zuffa Boxing division<\/a>, Topuria (17-0, 7 KOs, 8 submissions) is keen on making his pro boxing debut much like the previous face of the UFC, Conor McGregor, faced Floyd Mayweather Jr.<\/a> in a 2017 spectacle. <\/p>\n “Even if I still have fights with the UFC, you can always ask to go to boxing. They did it with Conor, why not with me? I would love to go to boxing,” Topuria told Kyle Forgeard of the YouTube influencer group, the Nelk Boys. <\/p>\n “I would love to go against the winner of Canelo Alvarez<\/a> and Terence Crawford<\/a>. Canelo, because he was my idol. There’s always respect for everyone, but I have to try. Why not? I feel like I can do it. If they want to give me the opportunity to do it directly, why not? <\/p>\n “I want to discover something new. If we’re gonna do it, now is the best time. Maybe I’ll be the first [UFC fighter] to get a world title in boxing. Let’s go, Turki Alalshikh. I would love it, and it would be a great experience.”<\/p>\n Topuria was the 145-pound champion and now holds the 155-pound crown. And he intends to challenge for the 170-pound title down the line. <\/p>\n Alvarez, the undisputed super middleweight champion, and Crawford are set to square off Sept. 13 in Las Vegas on Netflix. During a press conference in June, Alvarez was asked about the potential of fighting Topuria.<\/p>\n “First of all, I have never seen him fight a full fight, completely, but I really love him and respect him a lot, and I admire and thank him,” Alvarez said.<\/p>\n “I have a lot of gratitude for fighters who take a little bit of my fighting and respect it. It’s awesome to see other fighters like me. But let’s see, in terms of fighting him, first things first. Let’s worry about Crawford now.”<\/p>\n Manouk Akopyan is The Ring\u2019s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Undefeated UFC lightweight champion and former featherweight titleholder Ilia Topuria has quickly evolved into the face of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,5051,3262,82,13036],"class_list":["post-59928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canelo-alvarez","tag-ilia-topuria","tag-sports","tag-terence-crawford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}