Ilia Topuria is done chasing Terence Crawford.<\/p>\n
For a hot minute, the two-division UFC champion was pushing hard<\/a> for a boxing bout against \u201cBud,\u201d who at the time was in the middle of preparing the fight Canelo Alvarez in September 2025. Crawford would end up beating Alvarez in a masterful performance<\/a> \u2026 and then he retired<\/a> from the sport.<\/p>\n Crawford no-sold Ilia\u2019s challenge, saying he\u2019d never even seen \u201cEl Matador\u201d fight. That kicked off what looked like a mostly one-sided feud<\/a> from Topuria, who wasn\u2019t able to get anyone to take his challenge seriously. All that seems over with \u201cBud\u201d properly confirmed his retirement.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that he\u2019s retired, congrats to him for an amazing career that he had,\u201d Topuria said on The Ariel Helwani Show. \u201cHe\u2019s one of those boxers that I like to watch. I have learned many, many things from his style, so I don\u2019t wanna even talk or challenge him because he\u2019s retired. So I wish him all the best to him and his family.\u201d<\/p>\n While some expect \u201cBud\u201d to return from retirement any day now, Topuria believes Crawford is done.<\/p>\n \u201cHe seems to be a a serious guy,\u201d Ilia said. \u201cLike, he seems to be the kind of person that says something and he backs it up.\u201d<\/p>\n That hasn\u2019t stopped Topuria from wanting a boxing match<\/a> \u2026 eventually, once he\u2019s done dominating in the world of MMA.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, it\u2019s on my list. Of course, it\u2019s gonna happen,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna happen. At least one fight, after I finish my journey in the mixed martial arts, I\u2019m gonna make that move for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know [who I\u2019ll fight against]. When the moment arrives, I don\u2019t know who\u2019s gonna be on the top, who\u2019s gonna be the world champion in the weight class where I wanna fight. So we\u2019ll see, there are many factors that matters before taking those kind of decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Topuria was definitely high on his own supply when he called out Crawford. While he\u2019s a massive star in Spain,<\/a> he still hasn\u2019t broken through into North American stardom. Once he fights in the main event of the UFC White House<\/a> card, that could change. If he moves up to welterweight and beats Islam Makhachev,<\/a> no one would be able to deny he\u2019s the best mixed martial artist in the world.<\/p>\n Then it will be time to call out the Crawfords of the world and hope that the match-up intrigues some rich Saudi backers. But first, there\u2019s work to be done in the UFC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilia Topuria is done chasing Terence Crawford. For a hot minute, the two-division UFC champion was pushing hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,30874,101,914,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-548951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-news-results","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-ufc-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}