What a time to return to writing because it was just in time for one of the biggest upsets we've seen over the last handful of years and, at least from a narrative perspective, of all time. I know betting odds wise it won't make any list of the biggest upsets we've seen, but from a general public perspective, it really didn't feel like there was anyone giving Gaethje more than a punchers chance in this one. Even finding someone saying "well you never know" was hard to come by. It was almost a forgone conclusion that Topuria would win, it was just a matter of what method and how long it would be. Gaethje flipped all of that on it's head with one of, if not the best performance of his entire career. It all culminated in what will be a fight of the year candidate when we look up in 6 months with both guys having their highs and lows before the fight being called off by someone in the Topuria corner. There is some debate as to who actually made the call and we will get into it in a little bit, but I'm not sure it particularly matters. Let's take a look at what happened and where they could go from here.
We'll start with Justin and as I alluded to above, this might have very well been his best and most complete performance to date. He came out with a plan, executed it, and stuck to it. We have become so accustomed to Justin ditching his plan and turning things into a brawl, but I think even he knew that doing that here would end terribly for him. He started off fighting more carefully against Paddy, but I believe when he realized Paddy posed no threat to him, he felt safe to just brawl with him. He didn't do that here at all. He came out in the first round and immediately started to put it on Ilia albeit in a more controlled fashion than what we typically see from him. He fought behind his jab more than he ever has in his career and quickly found some success with uppercuts to get through Ilia's high and tight guard. I wrote and published early on Saturday my predictions were I speculated that Gaethje may try to clinch and that did seem to be part of the strategy for him as well. He was able to grab hold of a collar tie and use that to land upper cuts in close pretty consistently. It wasn't without adversity for him though as in the second round, Gaethje was close to being finished. Ilia started working the body consistently and ripped some hard shots to both side of Justin's ribs that eventually saw him doubled over in pain. He was somehow able to move and protect himself enough to keep the fight alive to the end of the round. I think the grappling exchange they had in the second round really depleted a lot of Ilia's cardio reserves because even though Ilia had all of the momentum at the final horn, he didn't look like someone who almost finished the fight when they came out for the 3rd. Justin got right back to work fighting behind his jab and landing the same uppercuts that were successful earlier on. I think at some point Justin realized just how tired Ilia was and that he wasn't throwing back as much and he started opening up with more straight and overhand rights. He started hurting Ilia almost every time he touched him at that point. He dropped him several times and it looked like he had the doctor's stoppage at the end of the 3rd round. After a weird interaction between the doctor and Marc Goddard, someone decided the fight would continue. Whether it was the extra rest or just some added adrenaline, Ilia actually had a better 4th round than he did in the 3rd, but I had it 3-1 Gaethje. Ultimately, someone stopped the fight and Gaethje was finally able to achieve undisputed champion status in his 3rd title shot and second time being interim champion. It was an incredible night for him and a deserving moment for someone who has done so much in and for the sport.
As with all of these fights, the only logical place your mind can go after awhile is where do we go from here. In this case, there really only seems to be 2 options. Those are to either retire and walk away on top or defend against the obvious number one contender, Arman Tsarukyan. Now, just because there are only 2 options, does not mean the decision is simple. What could make this a simple decision is Gaethje's physical health. How he feels and his desire to continue fighting could put an end to this conversation really quickly. He's a guy who has taken as much damage as anyone to ever do it, so if he were to come out and say that's enough, I don't feel like I can physically go through another camp, weight cut, and fight again, I would really have no reason not to believe him. However, I don't really think we are going to see someone like Justin, who clearly lives for this sport, say that he's had enough. The retirement question is more so based around "is this the perfect way to go out?" and in a lot of ways, the answer is probably yes. This was an extremely unique event that had an incredible amount of hype and he pulled off an extremely unforeseen upset to capture his first undisputed title after a career long chase. It is hard to imagine there is anything that could happen for him, at age 38, over the next few years that would be a more obvious point to walk away. With that said, we don't really see guys walk away with the belt very often. They spend their entire careers chasing it and it is typically just too hard to walk away from the payday that comes with the belt. I don't necessarily think Justin needs the money, but after so many years of putting your body on the line, it has to be incredibly difficult to walk away now when just one more fight to defend your title comes with one of the best paychecks of your career. I think an underrated aspect of this conversation is the fact that Arman is almost guaranteed to be the fight. I know we just came off of a fight where everyone said this was a horrible matchup and Justin had no chance, only for him to pull it off, but a fight with Arman really is the worst matchup left in the division for Justin. Arman is going to come out and push a heavy grappling attack that we have seen melt Justin time and time again in his career. Knowing that is the matchup has to leave Justin considering retirement more than he probably wants to. If I were him, I would lean into the retirement narrative behind the scenes and use that leverage to maybe work a matchup with Mauricio Ruffy who has good momentum coming off of this card or even a potential rematch with Charles Oliveira. Charles is a tough matchup in his own right, but I think that card would come with a lot more attention so even if it went poorly, it would be more financially worth it. Arman is probably the toughest fight with the least financial incentive, but I do ultimately think we see Justin vs Arman as a main event at some point towards the end of the year. Now, there was a rumor that Arman was going to be fighting Charles for the BMF belt in September I believe, but we really haven't heard anything more about that, at least not that has come across my radar. As we sit here today, I don't really see that as being all that necessary of a fight to make. Arman has already been on the sidelines for how long now? I don't think him waiting another 5 or so months for Gaethje makes any difference and it really can only serve to take away someone's momentum unnecessarily. If anything, I think it makes way more sense to just tentatively pencil in Arman for the fight and wait to see what Gaethje decides to do. In the mean time, you have big fights with McGregor vs Holloway and Paddy vs BSD already on the books. I think you have to let those fights play out and see who comes out on top and you'll really have a lay of the land at that point with lots of options and combinations to play with. Those fights are only a month out anyways so, all of their timelines will be more or less in line. I think doing Arman vs Charles just creates more problems than the fight itself is worth. Regardless of who wins, neither will be ready to fight until December at the absolute earliest, probably January more realistically and even that is best case scenario. Of course, if Conor pulls off the upset then all of this goes out the window and he probably vaults himself right into a title fight because who involved in the process would say no to that. However, a win for Max leaves us with a Max vs Gaethje 2 fight but it would be weird given that we just saw Max dominated by Charles. If Paddy were to get the win over BSD, then that is a rematch of a fight that Justin just won fairly easily. A win for BSD would put him into a position to argue for a title fight and while it is a fresh matchup, I don't think that is necessarily a fight anyone is dying to see. In any case, I do ultimately think that the Arman fight is the most likely outcome. He's not in the good graces of the UFC right now, but he has elevated himself on social media to gain some popularity and, at least in my opinion, is pretty clearly the number one contender based on merit.
That brings us to Ilia Topuria and we now have to explore scenarios that I don't suspect many people within the UFC were planning for. Before we get to all of that, we can talk a little about his performance in the actual fight. I said in my breakdown that Ilia is not really a fast starter, but then afterwards, I was questioning my own statement. I think I could have phrased it a bit better, but I stand by it. What I really meant was that Ilia really isn't someone who comes out full force from the opening bell. Justin Gaethje is much more of that guy historically as well as others like Michael Chandler, Dustin Poirier, and even Benoit St. Denis. Those guys come out hot and ready to scrap from the jump. Even though Ilia has had some earlier finishes, I always felt it was more a product of his outlier tier power than anything strategic on his part. That's what made this fight so interesting because even though Ilia didn't come out firing on all cylinders, he was pretty clearly over swinging early. When he did open up his combinations, he was really trying to take Gaethje's head off. While he landed some good shots, he would wind up losing the first round on most people's score cards. He looked more like himself in the second round where he did most of his damage. He landed some massive body shots and had Gaethje significantly compromised. I've seen some people second guessing that Ilia should have made Gaethje get up instead of following him to the ground and while it is easy to say he should have done something differently now that we know what happened, I think it was a fine decision in the moment. We know how vulnerable Justin has been on the ground and I'm sure Ilia thought he could submit him. I think more of a problem was just how tired Ilia got around the 8 minute mark or so. By the time Ilia got on top, he looked absolutely exhausted and I'm sure the damage he had taken only compounded that. After a bounce back second round, thinks really went off the rails for him. He gotten beaten up for most of the 3rd round and that led us to the weird situation with the doctor. It looked to me and judging by the online reaction, to most others that the doctor stopped the fight. We could overhear Ilia say that he can't see when he was speaking with his corner, but I don't believe he said that when the doctor came over. They did a quick check on him and the doctor seemed to shake his head that the fight should not continue. We see Ilia protest and that is when Goddard comes over to talk. He says a few things and the doctor does a quick second check and he just kind of shrugs his shoulders and Goddard says we are good to go and he gets everyone out of the cage. Obviously, we will never know exactly what Ilia was seeing or not seeing and what the doctor saw, but it sure looked like when Goddard came over, he just kind of told him what he wanted to hear. Ilia then came out for the 4th and while he did look better, he still lost the round and took an incredible amount of damage. When he got into the corner, you can hear Ilia say either "no mas" or "uno mas" and I can't tell which one it is. Then, more clearly, you can hear his brother say "we will finish the fight". I think, in the moment, from an American perspective, I interpret that as "he will go out and fight the last round". After seeing some online discourse, I realized that it could have just as easily been a translation issue and what he really might have meant is lets finish this fight now as in lets just stop now before it gets worse. From my perspective, I don't particularly care. I'm not going to sit here and call Ilia a quitter because he took an insane amount of damage, especially to his eyes and the final knee to his ribs right at the horn. If it was the corner that threw in the towel then good on them for protecting their fighter. I don't think any less of him for the way the fight ended whatsoever. This was clearly not Ilia's best night at the office and there is a bevy of reasons that could be. It does seem like he was out schemed by Trevor Wittman and the rest of the team on the Gaethje side. It did seem to me that Ilia was expecting Gaethje to throw more low kicks. I really don't remember Gaethje throwing all that many early on and the one he did throw later, Ilia timed it perfectly and cracked him with a straight right. I don't believe Gaethje threw another one after that. It just led me to believe that Ilia had planned to punish Gaethje's naked leg kicks and Gaethje just never really went to them. Ilia is an incredibly gifted and talented fighter and I believe he can bounce back from this. I think a lot of the talk reacting to this fight is on the hyperbolic side just because of the standard Ilia had set for himself. He as a guy who was speed running his GOAT candidacy and just had a tough night. I think we will see him bounce back whenever it is that he makes his return.
What comes next for Ilia is a conversation that is very much up in the air. First and foremost, it is almost impossible to say because we just don't really know the extent of his injuries. I did see somewhere yesterday that he doesn't need any surgery for his orbit, which is great news. He still took an insane amount of damage and did so for the first time in his career. I would imagine that he and his team will want to be careful and make sure he returns only when he is fully healthy and ready to do so. I don't really want to be that guy, so I'll say it once and leave it at that, but I do wonder how much his personal life and the situation with his family played a role in what we saw on Sunday night. Whether it was still being ironed out or just weighing on his mind, I think some more time while all of that settles in will serve him well. When we do see Ilia come back, there is also the question about if he stays at 155 or goes back to 145. Frame wise, he looks much more life a featherweight, but Ilia has said he just can't do the cut. He even went up to lightweight briefly to fight Jai Herbert before going back down. I don't really think he's going to be all that interested in going down, so I will operate assuming he's staying at lightweight. Depending just how long Ilia decides to sit out for, he may be able to walk right back into a title shot. While there would be some people who don't like it, I don't think it is the most ridiculous thing ever. He was a great champion and depending on the layout of the division when he returns, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with it. I don't really think he should get the immediate rematch though. I think he should take some time to get healthy and let Justin fight Arman or Charles or whoever it may be and then return for the following title fight. If he wants to come back on a more normal turn around schedule and doesn't get the title fight, I think the obvious choice is the Paddy fight. Paddy will either be coming off of 2 losses in a row and we know how the UFC likes to match up guys with losing streaks together or he'll be coming off of a bounce back win and Paddy vs Ilia can serve as a de facto number one contender fight. That fight has everything you could want. It is 2 extremely popular fighters with huge fan bases who already have some tension that has been building over the last several years. I think the fighters want the fight, I know the fans want the fight, and I see no reason the UFC wouldn't want it either. I don't think any of the other true top contenders really make all that much sense. Doing Ilia vs Arman with no title feels like you're just killing one of your top contenders for no reason and we've already seen Ilia fight both Max and Charles. The dark horse matchup in all of this really is Conor. Conor is far and away the biggest card the UFC has to play, especially with Jon Jones seemingly gone at this point. I'm still not really convinced we ever see Conor back, but we're less than a month away from the return date at this point. Assuming he actually does make the walk for that fight and it goes the way I think most people assume it will, the UFC will have Conor with 1 fight left on his deal. There is countless ways they could choose to navigate that problem, but I assume Ilia's name will be one heavily in the mix. I don't think he would be the top option just because Ilia isn't someone who really needs the rub at this point, but that is one of, if not the biggest fight the UFC could put on with people who they currently have under contract. Personally, I think making the Paddy fight is kind of a no brainer at this point, but we will see how the division unfolds over the next few months and get a feel for when Ilia is both willing and able to return and what the state of the division is like at the time.
What did you guys think of the fight? What do you make of the game planning on both sides? What was most surprising to you? Should Justin retire or who should he defend against first? Where should the UFC go with Ilia from here? Leave any and all of your thoughts in the comments and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day.
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