Featherweight champion Ilia Topuria has made all sorts of predictions for his upcoming fight at UFC 308, but don’t expect Max Holloway to entertain any of his so-called challenges.
The most recent declaration from Topuria was that he planned to march to center of the octagon at the start of the fight and point to the ground as an invitation for Holloway to meet him there to start trading bombs. It’s a gesture that Holloway made famous after he did that years ago to prompt a wild exchange in the closing moments of his fight with Ricardo Lamas before doing it again at UFC 300 and pulling off one of the craziest knockouts in history with a last-second finish over Justin Gaethje.
Holloway says the problem with Topuria trying to steal his move is that he doesn’t even understand when or why he’s done that in the past.
“The point down moment — I don’t think he gets the gist of it,” Holloway told MMA Fighting. “At the end of the day the point down, it’s something that you do towards the ending of the fight. If something is going good, if the fight is entertaining or you’re winning, you give the other guy a shot. The moment is the moment for a reason.”
Topuria promised if Holloway actually met him in the center and threw caution to the wind that he would deliver a first-round knockout. Holloway doesn’t discount that as a possibility—just like he could leave Topuria face down on the canvas in the same exchange—but that’s courting disaster in a fight that’s supposed to showcase two of the best and most skilled fighters in the world.
“The belt is called the ‘Blessed Man Forever’ or what you guys want to call ‘the baddest mother effer,’” Holloway said referencing the ‘BMF’ title he won when he defeated Gaethje. “If the belt was the ‘DMF,’ the dumbest mother effer, then maybe I would get sucked into it. It’s far from that.
“Like what I told you, and I told him, he talks about being boxer — that’s not very much boxer IQ’ish of him, but we’ll see what happens.”
Topuria challenging Holloway to throw down with him in a Toughman-style brawl is just the latest bit of trash talk coming from the featherweight champion ahead of UFC 308. He’s also said recently that Holloway didn’t actually want this fight but instead was forced into accepting the title bout after the UFC supposedly passed on a potential matchup against Michael Chandler instead.
If Topuria is trying to get in Holloway’s head with these constant jabs, he might be wasting his time because the 32-year-old Hawaiian can only laugh at that accusation.
“The first guy I called out [after UFC 300] was the man sitting ringside,” Holloway says referencing Topuria. “It’s funny. He says that, but then you can go and click, there’s an interview of him saying that he won’t fight me if the BMF title wasn’t on the line. The last time I checked, the BMF title is not on the line.
“So if anybody got forced to fight, it looks like him. It came out of his own mouth. He said he wasn’t going to fight me unless the BMF title is on the line. It’s not, buddy. So I guess he played himself on that one.”
Holloway admits that he had plenty of options available to him after his jaw-dropping win over Gaethje, but the only fight he really wanted was the one he got at UFC 308.
“I wanted Ilia Topuria,” Holloway said. “I wanted the featherweight title. I wanted to be a two-time world [champion]. The undisputed title is what I wanted.”
Between now and Saturday night, Holloway expects he’ll hear Topuria issue more nonsensical challenges and make all sorts of predictions about the fight.
None of that matters much to Holloway as long as Topuria shows up at his very best and doesn’t forget to bring that UFC title with him to Abu Dhabi.
“At the end of the day, if that’s what he needs to get himself to the fight or through the fight or whatever it is to the date, then so be it,” Holloway said. “Some people, that’s what they need. They need that self-confidence. They need to build their self-confidence some way, and if it’s pumping his chest and slapping his chest and being like ‘I’m the man,’ then that’s him.
“You can’t take it away. He got pretty far using that technique. So at the end of the day, if he’s using it for this fight, so be it.”
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