UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria’s coach confirms his plans to move up to lightweight and explains why.
Topuria (16-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) surprised many when he hinted at leaving featherweight by showing interest in Charles Oliveira. His head coach, Jorge Climent, clarified that the motivation behind the change is the tough weight cut.
“Yeah, the real thing, I think, is he hates to cut weight,” Climent told Submission Radio. “He does it a lot of times, and it’s very hard every time we do it. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, and that’s why he wants to go up to the next weight class, you know, because he thinks his normal weight is in that weight class.”
Topuria, who’s coming off back-to-back knockouts of Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway, competed once at lightweight when he knocked out Jai Herbert in March 2022. Climent says the cut down to 145 pounds has started to take a toll on Topuria’s body.
“In the beginning, Ilia fighting 61 kilos (bantamweight) and he’s young,” Climent said. “And your body is changing. When you’re 20, you have a body. When you’re 25, you have another. And when you are 30, you have another. Always your muscular production (grows) and your weight is difficult to cut. We decided because he wants to feel better. Sometimes I see Ilia in 85 kilos, and he needs to be 66. We do a very big weight cut.”
What about the UFC featherweight title?
After Topuria knocked out Holloway, he agreed to run things back with Volkanovski. However, with his featherweight days likely behind him, Climent guesses his star student would just vacate his title.
“I suppose if he goes to another weight class, the belt is going to be vacant,” Climent said. “And I don’t know what is going to happen if he doesn’t want to defend it. He left it to the people in this way.
“I don’t think he’s going to defend the featherweight title. I think he wants to go to lightweight. I don’t think they give the opportunity to fight directly for for the belt, but he wants to fight with the ranked guys to come for the belt.”
