Ilia Topuria: 'I'm going to beat Volkanovski and then fight Max Holloway'

22/11/2023 17:30

Ilia Topuria was originally scheduled to fight for the featherweight championship against Alexander Volkanovski in January, but after Volkanovski was knocked out by Islam Makhachev at UFC 294 in October, the fight was pushed back to UFC 298 on Feb. 17.

"What happened in his last fight didn't change anything for me. The training is the same. The focus is the same. I'm going to train for the best in the world. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get that win," Topuria said during an appearance on the OverDogs Podcast.

UFC 298 is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, but the venue has yet to be announced.

"In reality, I don't know (if it's happening in Los Angeles). They changed the location so many times. It was in LA, then I heard something that maybe it's going to take place in Las Vegas, or Australia. I don't know. In reality I don't care," said Topuria.

Wherever UFC 298 takes place, Topuria usually arrives a month before the fight to get acclimated to the time change. Topuria said, "I always like to go with my team. The first week you feel like a zombie, you're tired with the time change and everything. I have to find out where the supermarket is, we got to buy the food and drinks. Once you get acclimated to that, the last three weeks you finish the training camp and get ready for the fight."

In this training camp, Topuria has worked a lot of wrestling and grappling because he believes that he'll have an advantage over Volkanovski there.

"I just went back to my backgrounds. I'm doing a lot of grappling, a lot of wrestling because that's where I really think that I'll have the advantage with him because he's a good striker, but he's not a natural wrestler. He's not good at the ground. This is where I'm going to make a difference," Topuria said.

"I'm going to beat Volk on Feb. 17th, and then I'm going to fight with Max Holloway here in Spain. That's, right now, my goal. It's going to happen. Perfect."

When fight week comes, Topuria has an interesting way of cutting weight, but it's worked for him in the last five fights.

"It started in one of my training camps for the Damon Jackson fight. I had a couple of kilos to go on my weight cut and one of his nutritionist told him, hey, 'a good way to do it. maybe you've heard of it before, but it's drinking wine.' A half a liter of wine will dehydrate you more than a kilo. By doing that, it helps me sleep. Every since then I've been doing it, so it's been working. It's tough to sleep before the weigh-ins because you're cutting weight. When you drink wine, you don't give a f**k about anything because you get really drunk, so that helped me a lot about everything."