Ilia Topuria was a supremely confident two-weight champion who wouldn’t hesitate to voice his opinion on other top fighters.
During his time as undisputed 145- and 155-pound UFC champion, Topuria said at various times he would make easy work of many other fighters, including fellow two-weight champion Islam Makhachev, No. 1-ranked lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan and even multi-weight boxing great Terance Crawford.
Topuria entered Sunday's UFC Freedom 250 main event against Justin Gaethje with an unblemished 17-0 professional record and was coming off consecutive knockout wins in championship bouts against Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway at featherweight and Charles Oliveira at lightweight.
The 29-year-old Spanish-Georgian star couldn't add another knockout to his record and instead suffered his first loss.
His corner stopped the fight after four rounds due to all the damage Topuria had absorbed at the hands of Gaethje.
Topuria lost via technical knockout to Gaethje, who became the organization's new undisputed lightweight champion.
Gaethje landed 91 significant strikes on Topuria, more than any of Topuria’s previous opponents.
Although Topuria had his moments throughout the fight, his face was bloodied and swollen, and he was down three rounds to one on the judges’ scorecards before the fight was stopped, meaning he would've needed a finish in the final round to win the fight.
Immediately after Topuria’s record fell to 17-1, the fighter was transported to a local hospital for monitoring as some of his peers went to social media to react to the surprise result.
Makhachev and Topuria were the No. 1 and No. 2 pound-for-pound fighters, respectively, on the UFC roster before the event that took place at the White House. Topuria is sure to tumble down that list after losing to Gaethje.
Topuria said during a podcast interview leading up to the event that he had planned on keeping his fight with Gaethje on the feet and looking for the knockout.
“If I wanted, of course I can take (Gaethje) down and I’d do with him whatever I wanted to do,” Topuria told DeepCut with VicBlends. “But I really want to give the fans the show. … It's gonna be a pure striking fight. At least from my side. If he’s going to try to take me down, then we have different plans for that also. Any way, I’m going to end up knocking him out.”
A turning point in the bout happened in the second round when Topuria hurt Gaethje with a punch to the liver, yet instead of continuing to strike, he pursued submissions, which allowed Gaethje time to recover.
Gaethje won an interim lightweight title when he battered Tony Ferguson in 2020 and won the vacant “BMF” title in 2023, when he knocked out Dustin Poirier but this was his first undisputed title win. He previously was submitted by Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2020 and Charles Oliveira in 2022 in his two other undisputed lightweight title matches.
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