Ilia
Topuria wants to defend his title against Max
Holloway and then fight Conor
McGregor at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium in Spain.
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Topuria became the featherweight champion with a second-round
knockout win over Alexander
Volkanovski at
Brian Ortega as an ideal opponent for his first title defense,
“El Matador” has now changed his tune.
Topuria recently laid down a two-fight plan to first defend his
strap against Holloway and then face McGregor in “the biggest fight
in MMA history.” Topuria is plotting a fight against “Notorious” at
the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, home of football club Real Madrid,
and expects it to shatter all records. The Spaniard also recently
claimed to have a date for the UFC’s planned debut in his home
country this year.
“So, I hope to defend the belt with Max
Holloway and then I want to fight with Conor
McGregor hopefully,“ Topuria told Sportskeeda MMA. „If he wins his upcoming fight,
that’s the fight what I’m looking for. So hopefully it’s gonna
happen. It’s gonna be the biggest fight in the MMA history, the
biggest ticketing, the biggest pay-per-view, the biggest
everything. We gonna have like 80,000 people watching the fight in
the arena… Yeah, it’s gonna be in the Bernabeu.”
Holloway became the BMF champion with a lopsided fifth-round TKO
win over Justin
Gaethje at UFC
300 last month. Meanwhile, McGregor is slated to return to
action after three years in a welterweight matchup against Michael
Chandler at
UFC 303 on June 29.
While Topuria is open to moving up a weight class to fight
McGregor, “El Matador” isn’t eyeing a contest against reigning
lightweight champ Islam
Makhachev yet.
“Maybe, maybe in the future,” he said. “Right now, I just see the
Max
Holloway fight, the Conor fight and maybe if he [Makhachev]
keeps defending the belt, keeps becoming bigger and bigger and
bigger, maybe one day we can see that fight too. But for the
moment, for right now, he’s not in my list.”