UFC interim champion Tom Aspinall is so impressed with featherweight champion Ilia Topuria that he’s willing to bet that the Spaniard’s 2025 is going to be better than the incredible 2024 he’s already had. Aspinall believes it’s a new age for Spanish, Georgian, and European MMA as a whole.
In his review of the UFC in 2024, Aspinall asserted that Topuria was the first fighter to come to his mind. He had been a part of the featherweight title conversation for a long time but the way he has gone on about it makes him really special.
“Going in there to beat a great in the sport like Alexander ‘The Great’ Volkanovksi, a personal favorite of mine, someone I know, someone I look up to… The belt changed hands in February and then he came back again against Max Holloway and knocked him out… a guy who had never even been dropped in the UFC before. So that’s two legends he’s beaten in a year. What this guy is going to do in 2025 is likely even going to be even bigger than what he did in 2024”
Aspinall’s dead on point here. The UFC might be more focused on bigger names like Jon Jones and Alex Pereira, but Topuria has been silently weaving himself into the annals of UFC history. Not just that, his popularity seems to have transcended beyond the octagon and into the streets of Spain.
A street artist has painted a mural of Ilia Topuria in the streets of Barcelona ⭐️
albertoleon_art / TikTok
— MMA Orbit (@mma_orbit) November 3, 2024
Street art is something generally reserved for revolutionaries, or soccer stars, or sometimes both. The fact that a UFC champion can find himself being beloved in such a way is a sign of bigger things to come.
In fact, Topuria himself is planning to ensure it.
Topuria’s 2025 campaign
Earlier this year, Topuria announced that he wants to be out of the UFC by 30 years of age, which leaves him with three years to do whatever he wants to in the octagon.
He plans to start by taking on Charles ‘Do Bronx’ Oliveira. Having just announced a move to lightweight, Topuria has challenged the former lightweight champion to a fight in 2025. Oliveira, fresh off his victory against Michael Chandler was hoping to get back on the title bandwagon but Topuria shares a similar dream.
Having defeated both Volkanvski and Holloway in the same year, Topuria now wants to gain territory into the lightweight division, which he hopes eventually gets him an audience with the king, Islam Makhachev. Makhachev, already on three title defenses is fighting Arman Tsarukyan at UFC 311.
If he manages to get past Tsarukyan, Makhachev would have effectively earned the right to call himself the greatest UFC lightweight of all time.
Topuria hopes the stars are aligned for them to fight when that happens.
If Ilia manages to get past Oliveira, he will effectively end Do Bronx’s title campaign. Dustin Poirier is at the end of his career and Michael Chandler is still chasing a Conor McGregor fight for some reason.
So there will be one left in the Top 5 for Makhachev to fight.
Islam could move up to welterweight but it is unlikely he will fight his friend Belal Muhammad, the champion of that division. This leaves him with only one option- Ilia Topuria at Santiago Bernabeu!
It is a game of odds right now but if the gods are willing, all roads lead to Spain.
