LAS VEGAS — Dana White was seated next to the Octagon at Apex on Wednesday afternoon when he pulled out his phone and jumped on Instagram Live. He had that grin, the one that signals chaos incoming.
“We’ll have a big announcement when we’re done filming,” he said, the corners of his mouth barely containing it. His youngest son, Aidan, dropped into the comments with a “Who cares?” to poke at his famous Dad.
It turns out, just about everyone did.
Ninety minutes later, White didn’t just drop one bomb. He was Patrick Mahomes shredding the woeful Browns with touchdown after touchdown. The UFC had signed Patricio “Pitbull” Freire, Shavkat Rakhmonov was injured, and Alex Volkanovski would fight Diego Lopes for the vacant featherweight belt.
Amid all the headlines, the biggest story got lost in the noise:
Ilia Topuria, the undefeated wrecking machine from Spain, just made the leap that will profoundly change the combat sports landscape.
The reigning featherweight champion can’t make 145 safely anymore, so he did what few in his position would: He walked away from the belt voluntarily.
And now, he’s on the verge of succeeding Conor McGregor as the UFC’s next global megastar. He’s about to trot past Sean O’Malley and lightweight champ Islam Makhachev and maybe even McGregor, the king himself, to become the face of the UFC, MMA’s next global superstar and potentially the biggest attraction in combat sports.
He checks every box.
He’s speeding toward a head-on collision with Makhachev—two elite athletes in their primes, destined to collide for supremacy.
We’re headed toward something seismic.
It may not be next and there are sensible arguments for both plans. Charles Oliveira is a former lightweight champion and he’s already earned a rematch with Makhachev.
The UFC could make Makhachev-Oliveira and then establish a clear next by making Topuria against Arman Tsarukyan.
The UFC could honor Oliveira’s rematch claim and line up Makhachev-Oliveira next. That would give Topuria a high-stakes matchup with Arman Tsarukyan—a fight that would settle the lightweight pecking order once and for all.
Here’s where it gets interesting. International Fight Week is always the UFC’s premier event. This year, UFC 317 is at T-Mobile Arena on June 28.
If the UFC wants to break records — and White’s made it clear a million times in his tenure that he loves breaking records — it could build a card that might eclipse the 2.4 million sales that McGregor-Khabib did at UFC 229.
Picture this lineup:
• Main event: Heavyweight champion Jon Jones versus interim heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall.
• Co-main event: Lightweight champion Islam Makhachev versus former champion Charles Oliveira.
• Former featherweight champion Ilia Topuria vs. No. 1 lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan.
The plots and subplots would be enormous. The fights themselves are great, but this would go deeper.
You’d have Jones versus Makhachev going for the mythical pound-for-pound title. White championed Jones as the best fighter alive for much of 2024, and Jones made him look like a genius when he obliterated Stipe Miocic at UFC 309.
But White later conceded that Makhachev had taken the throne after dismantling Money Moicano at UFC 311.
Tsarukyan could ruin so many plans by besting Topuria. And Topuria, who believes he’s already the No. 1 fighter in the world, could do that by making Tsarukyan his third consecutive significant KO after Volkanovski and Max Holloway.
Speaking of Holloway, maybe the UFC could throw him onto that card — he’s hugely popular in Las Vegas — and have him defend the BMF belt against, oh, Moicano?
It gets the blood pumping just thinking about it.
But this all goes back to Topuria and why he’s got a great chance to be the man.
He is multilingual and is a well-spoken guy. He knows how to hype a fight and drop in trash talk, but he’s never outrageous or making one cringe the way McGregor does far too often.
Topuria’s game is as diverse as it is devastating. He’s one of the two or three best strikers in the sport, and probably is in that range as a grappler.
He’s got a young Tiger Woods aura about him. He knows he’s great, he knows he’s about to do remarkable things and he’s comfortable putting the sport on his back for a while.
Makhachev could defeat Topuria if they meet and push him, for the time being, from the express lane to superstardom.
But what happens if he gets past Makhachev, if he delivers another show-stopping knockout and hoists a second UFC belt? At 28, he’ll have already surpassed the pace of the biggest icons in the sport.
Spain will crown him a national hero. The UFC will have its next global crossover star. And the rest of the lightweight division? They’ll be left fighting for second place.
McGregor and O’Malley made themselves undeniable with their words, their swagger, their jaw-dropping performances.
Topuria?
He’s proving you don’t need a gimmick when you leave no doubt.
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Lightweight champion Islam Makhachev could wind up facing Ilia Topuria in a clash of titans later this year.