Ilia
Topuria wants to defend his featherweight title against
Max
Holloway after the Hawaiian’s phenomenal performance at
UFC
300 on Saturday.
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Holloway moved to lightweight to challenge Justin
Gaethje for the BMF title at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. A
sizeable underdog going into the matchup, Holloway delivered one of
his career best performances, piecing “The Highlight” apart before
knocking him out cold in a buzzer beater. “Blessed” also walked
away with both the “Fight of the Night” and “Performance of the
Night” honors, which were raised to $300,000 each for the special
card.
Holloway’s performance was enough to catch the attention of the
featherweight champion. While he had called out Islam
Makhachev, Conor
McGregor and even Khabib
Nurmagomedov after his title win over Alexander
Volkanovski at UFC 298 in February, “El Matador” finally claims
to be sure of who he wants to fight next.
“Its clear for me, my next fight is against Max
Holloway,” Topuria told ESPN Deportes. “Congratulations and enjoy tonight, but
after fighting me he will have to go back in the line.”
Holloway also expressed interest in challenging Topuria for the
featherweight title after coming up short in his last three title
fights against Alexander
Volkanovski. “Blessed” referenced Topuria’s callout during
Saturday’s post-fight press conference.
“That’s cool,” Holloway said. “What do you want me to say? What if
he goes to the back of the line? So at the end of the day, we find
out. Like I said, we’ve got questions, we’ve got questions. We’re
in the fighting game. Ilia can talk, but I’ve got a lot of
questions. I like listening and if that ever gets booked, you guys
are going to see a lot of answers. So I’m excited for it.”