New featherweight champion Ilia Topuria acts like he's already made seven defenses of his UFC championship and cleaned out the division, rather than a guy who won the belt in his last fight.
Topuria said on a podcast released on Tuesday he's closing in on a deal to fight Max Holloway -- Awesome -- but wants Conor McGregor next.
Not so awesome.
Leon Edwards, the welterweight champion, will defend his belt against Belal Muhammad in the main event of UFC 304 on July 27 in Manchester, England. If he gets past Muhammad, he, too, wants McGregor next.
Ugh.
Yes, McGregor opponents tend to get paid more than the average, but this obsession with fighting McGregor isn't good.
Rather than try to hold onto McGregor's coattails, Topuria, Edwards and all those fighters who speak McGregor's name so hopefully should instead try to imitate what he did.
McGregor was a two-division Cage Warriors champion when he signed with the UFC, but it's a good bet at that time that more than 90 percent of the UFC fan base had no idea who McGregor was when he was booked to fight Marcus Brimage on April 6, 2013, on the late, not-so-lamented Fuel TV in the U.S.
McGregor made himself into a massive attraction in several ways:
• First, he is an elite fighter and he fought confidently and aggressively. As a result, he was finishing good fighters quickly and decisively.
• Second, he kept moving the competition up. He sought out the best competition he could find.
• Third, he instinctively understood how to use the media to his advantage. Few fighters are going to be as quick-witted or as clever as McGregor. And it helps that he comes from a fighting-mad country which is known for its rabid support of its athletes. But McGregor made himself available regularly and had a game plan when he made public appearances. He knew how to generate headlines and get people talking.
• Fourth, he hired good management and let them do their jobs.
• Fifth, he dreamed big. He talked early on of winning titles in two weight classes. He mentioned how important it would be to have Sinead O'Connor perform at one of his fights. Because he did all of those other things, he was able to turn those dreams into reality.
• And sixth, he was authentic. What works for McGregor isn't going to work for someone else. You can't try to steal his lines and his act and use it and expect to become an overnight sensation.
Topuria said on the podcast that a fight with him and McGregor would be the biggest fight ever. Now, every fight with McGregor is big these days. It's going to be that way for as long as he fights, regardless of the opponent. But if we assume for the sake of argument that Topuria defeats Holloway, is he well known enough to be a strong B side in the biggest fight in history? Unlikely.
Now, let's say Topuria goes out and beat Holloway and faces Volkanovski in a rematch and wins again. Then, perhaps he defeats say Brian Ortega and Movsar Evloev. At that point, he'd be ready to spread his wings and move on and maybe challenge lightweight champion Islam Makhachev.
And if he wins that, then, maybe then, will a fight with McGregor make sense.
McGregor is fighting Michael Chandler on June 29 at UFC 303 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. It will be his first fight in three years. It's optimistic to think he'll be able to come back in three or four months to fight given his injury history.
He's not on the same schedule as Topuria, and that's fine.
Topuria is a charismatic fighter with oodles of talent and the kind of style fans like. He needs to follow McGregor's lead and do his own thing to build his name, not try to surf in McGregor's wake.
The same is true of Edwards and every other MMA fighter, where they are a champion or not. McGregor laid out a blueprint for them to follow, just as Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, Ronda Rousey, Tito Ortiz, Georges St-Pierre, Brock Lesnar and others laid out.
It's doable, but trying to be someone else is just going to leave you in their fumes.