It doesn’t take long to find a clip or read a story about the confidence Ilia Topuria oozes as he approaches the biggest fight of his life.
But what may come as a surprise is that, for all the proclamations he makes of defeating all-timer Alexander Volkanovski and winning the featherweight title at UFC 298 via first-round knockout, for brash moves like strapping UFC gold to his waist at media day Wednesday, for all the observers who invoke the name of Conor McGregor when assessing the heights he can reach in mixed martial arts, Topuria asserts superstardom isn’t what he covets.
“To be honest, I’m not concentrated on that kind of thing,” Topuria told The Post on Wednesday, via video call, regarding the prospect of raising his profile in the United States. “I’m just concentrating on my thing, to do my job, which is to deal with all the interviews, with the weight cut, the fight, and everything else will come at the right time.”
If the likes of UFC color commentator and former Hall of Fame fighter Daniel Cormier is right, though, the right time might come immediately after the headlining fight Saturday (10 p.m. ET, ESPN+ pay-per-view).
Cormier, on his YouTube channel, drew parallels to McGregor’s legendary confidence ahead of the night he became UFC featherweight champion with an awe-inspiring, 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo in 2015, launching his profile into the combat sports stratosphere.
“I feel like Ilia Topuria is setting himself up to have that type of ascent if he can deliver on all of the promises that he is making,” said Cormier, the former two-division UFC champion.
Presented with the McGregor comparison, Topuria again demurred, simply accepting the compliment in a sign his overwhelming confidence perhaps knows some bounds.
“It makes me feel proud. It makes me feel good, of course,” said Topuria, a Georgian-Spaniard who was born in Germany and speaks the languages of all three nations in addition to rapidly improving English and a bit of Russian as well. “That means that I’m doing the right things.”
That’s about as far as the humbleness goes with Topuria, whose dominant decision victory over Josh Emmett last June set up the championship challenge against four-year champ Volkanovski.
Topuria (14-0, 12 finishes) recently updated his social media bio to read “Undefeated 15-0 UFC World Champion,” skipping past the part where he must still step into the cage and defeat a man who has never lost at 145 pounds and is a lock for the Hall of Fame.
In the mind of 27-year-old Topuria, who represents both his Georgian origins as well as his homeland of 12 years in Spain, it was already written that he would become UFC champion.
“It always was my destiny to become a UFC world champion,” Topuria says without a hint of forced brashness.
Though Topuria fully expects he’ll need little more than 5 minutes to dispatch Volkanovski — fresh off the first loss of his career by Round 1 KO in a second failed 2023 bid to unseat lightweight champ Islam Makhachev — he draws a line between difficulty of the task at hand and the way the task at hand will appear come Saturday night in Anaheim, Calif.
“Look, here’s the thing that a lot of people [are] confusing this: It’s not like it’s an easy fight,” Topuria explains, “because every fight, it’s very tough, and specifically with someone like him, when you’re fight a guy who defends his belt so many times, he was a pound-for-pound No. 1.
“But,” he continues, “yeah, for sure, I’m going to make it look easy because I’m different.”
Volkanovski (26-3, 16 finishes), in speaking with The Post this week, was dismissive of the path Topuria took to reach this shot at UFC gold, although the champ added that his upcoming opponent was the most deserving left after having cleaned up the other elite contenders.
Topuria has won all six of his bouts since arriving in the UFC three months after Volkanovski made his first successful title defense in an immediate rematch against Max Holloway, with just two fights coming against notable 145-pounders — Emmett and Bryce Mitchell.
To be sure, several other challengers in recent years faced stiffer competition or took longer to reach a shot at featherweight gold than Topuria, but it’s not as if Topuria has lived a charmed life free of challenges.
Arriving in Spain from Georgia at the transitional age of 15, he was reunited with his parents who had moved there when he was 8 years old but left behind all his friends, school and remaining family and left to adjust to life in a new country and speaking a different language.
“I had to do it,” says Topuria, looking back on that time. “And sometimes, in this life, you didn’t have many choices, right? You just have one way, and you have to do what you have to do.”
If that was easy for Topuria, he didn’t say.
But, like his plans for Volkanovski and beyond, he’s shooting to make it look that way.