Ilia Topuria says he was quietly thinking about calling it a career before he ever stepped in with Justin Gaethje. It took losing to talk him out of it. In an interview with Spanish outlet ABC, flagged by journalist KOlmenero and shared by Championship Rounds on X, Topuria said the defeat poured gasoline on a fire he figured was close to burning out.
“This defeat didn’t put out the fire. It made it much bigger. Lately I’d been thinking, ‘I’ve achieved everything, and after this fight, what else? Maybe I’ll even retire.’”
He followed that with a promise to anyone worried he’d ride off after one bad night: “You’ll see, and you’ll keep enjoying me for a little while longer. Two or three fights, yes. For sure.”
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So the guy who felt he had run out of mountains just found a new one, and it has Gaethje’s name on it, sort of.
How bad the night was
Topuria hasn’t sugarcoated the loss. In comments posted by FightLuck on X, he called it the worst day of his job and asked, “What’s worse? Dying?” He also credited his brother with stopping the fight, telling Adam Catterall, “If he wouldn’t stop the fight, probably I wouldn’t be able to fight again in my life. I’m so grateful with my brother.”
That’s a heavy admission from a fighter whose whole brand has been certainty. In what Championship Rounds described as his first interview since the loss, he summed up his mood in one line: “The fire inside me is even bigger now.”
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The trash talk survived the loss
If you thought a defeat would humble the Topuria mouth, nope. In the same ABC interview, he said Gaethje has no say in what comes next. “He doesn’t call any shots. This is between the UFC and me,” Topuria said, before dropping the line that’ll get screenshotted for months: “Justin is a nobody.”
He then pitched a fight with Paddy as the bigger draw, arguing that if that bout happened, Gaethje would end up in the co-main event even as the champion. He doubled down in the FightLuck clip: “I’m coming back in April. Paddy, Paddy, Paddy.”
On the timeline, the boss is roughly on the same page. Dana White told Jim Rome the UFC is already building Topuria’s return: “He’ll come back in early 2027. We’re working on that.”
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Quick take
I’ll be honest, I love this version of Topuria more than the undefeated one. A guy admitting he was bored at the top, then losing and suddenly getting his appetite back? That’s a sports movie, the part right before the training montage. But calling the man who just beat you a nobody is a bold move. It’s villain work, and I’m a sucker for a great villain, with one condition: villains have to deliver. Chasing Paddy in April while Gaethje sits there with the last word is the kind of detour fans will clock immediately, because the cleanest way to make the fire talk believable is to walk back through the guy who lit it. White says early 2027. Topuria says April. Whoever is across from him that night, the only result that backs up all this big talk is a win.
