February 14, 2025 8: 00 am ET
UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria theorizes that Dagestani fighters need to dominate to win.
As Topuria (16-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) angles for a fight against lightweight champ Islam Makhachev (27-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC), he took a shot at fighters from Dagestan.
With Umar Nurmagomedov suffering his first-career loss to bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 311, Topuria claimed that Dagestani fighters need to be the hammer, not the nail in order to win fights.
“None of them have special cardio and special stamina,” Topuria said on the “Full Send Podcast.” “The way they do it, it’s like, if you see fighting any of them, the thing they need when they go inside the octagon, in the first contact, they want to feel that they dominate you. They start to build a confidence that like, ‘I can dominate you, maybe you escape, we go in the st