As soon as the first punch was thrown in last Saturday’s UFC 314 main event between Alexander Volkanovski and Diego Lopes, Ilia Topuria was no longer the UFC featherweight champion.
Topuria (16-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) recently announced that he plans to make a permanent move up to the lightweight division, with reigning champion Islam Makhachev (29-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC) clearly in his sights.
Although there has been plenty of speculation that “La Leyenda” could be granted an immediate title shot at 155 pounds, he is still waiting to hear from UFC matchmakers about what’s next.
Now back in the role of a hungry challenger, Topuria appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience this week, where he opened up about the ongoing struggle of consistently making the 145-pound limit.
"I walk around 80, 82 (kilograms)", Topuria told host Joe Rogan. "(Making weight) was the hardest part of my training for the fight game, for me. I wasn't enjoying at all the last couple (of) fights that I had because it's like I had to become more professional in the weight cut than in a fight game, you know? And it was taking a lot of time and energy from me.
"And I'm like, 'my dream is to become a world champion', I want to end up this chapter that I have, that I started in 145, and now it's time to really enjoy it and I'm very excited about that.
"I started fighting in the bantamweight division before (signing with) the UFC like in Cage Warriors when I was fighting in the Cage Warriors. I actually missed the weight also when I was fighting for the belt. I was fighting at that time in the bantamweight division, then I kept fighting in the featherweight and now I'm in the lightweight. I hope I I don't end up fighting in the Welterweight!"
Topuria pointed to one of his predecessors at the top of the UFC featherweight division, Conor McGregor (22-6 MMA, 10-4 UFC), as an example of another champion who suffered greatly from cutting too much weight. He also revealed the harrowing extent of his own struggles during the process.
"He also suffered a lot with the weight cuts", the Spanish-Georgian said of "The Notorious". "That's also a big damage for your body. That's also (one of the) reasons why I changed the weight class. because I realised that my health is the most important thing in my life. You can have everything in this life but if you are not healthy, you don't have anything
"You sometimes feel that you're really going to die. I wasn't able to sleep (for) 48 hours at all because I was so dehydrated. My body was so skinny, I was dreaming about water, about food, about everything. My social media was (just showing me) food, food, food. At that moment you don't give a f**k about anything material."
