The current UFC featherweight champ Ilia Topuria may have reminded fans of the noted UFC icon Conor McGregor when he snatched the UFC featherweight title from Alexander Volkanovski’s table at the UFC 298 pre-event press conference. But the Spaniard’s head coach, Jorge Climent, revealed that he does it all for the sake of marketing. The Climent MMA head honcho recently appeared in an exclusive interview with The SportsRush, where he detailed that the real Topuria was far from what fans have witnessed during his UFC appearances.
The 27-year-old declared himself the UFC featherweight champion in his social media bio, well before he claimed the title from the former king, Volkanovski. This is why a large chunk of the UFC community may be calling Topuria a mystic as well. However, Climent disclosed that all of this mysticism and brashness aren’t associated with Topuria’s real character.
He detailed that the character Topuria displayed during his face-off with ‘Volk’ matched his usual persona a lot more. Climent said:
“All this s*it is for promotion, you know. If you see, when they look in the eyes, in the face to face, he [Topuria] said like, ‘I respect you [Volkanovski] like a human being, like a sportsman. But I came here for my dream’. That’s the real thing. We fight for our dreams.”
Avid UFC fans may realize that being a superb fighter isn’t enough to reach the top in the UFC currently. They need to market themselves to ensure better revenues for the promotion. This is why McGregor is probably the brightest star in the sky of the UFC to date. ‘The Notorious’ doesn’t mind going no-holds-barred with his trash-talking to ensure the sales of his fights.
But ‘Volk’ could probably see through Topuria’s made-up character. At a point in the press meet, he even called Topuria a “Conor McGregor wannabe“. Well, it might hurt hardcore UFC fans to witness that fighters have to change their character and trash-talk just to sell fights. However, this method has proven to be career-saving for one UFC fighter.
Colby Covington’s UFC career survived after following Conor McGregor and Ilia Topuria’s way
The noted UFC welterweight, Colby Covington’s early days in the UFC weren’t pretty bright. Despite showcasing some superb in-octagon skills, Covington’s fights failed to garner much attention from fans. A few sources also say that Dana White and Co. were about to cut ‘Chaos’ off the UFC roster as well.
This is when he realized that just being a good fighter won’t suffice to save his UFC career. Most UFC fans may remember the coveted moment that followed his next UFC victory on October 28 2017.
There are a lot of sources saying this was the exact moment that saved Covington’s UFC career. However, the promotion or fighters can never be blamed for this entire phenomenon. The fans, apart from watching quality fights, also prefer enjoying the drama. Otherwise, fighters like Colby Covington or Ilia Topuria wouldn’t probably have taken the way of promoting their fights with over-the-limits trash-talking.
