Movsar Evloev is a No. 5 featherweight and remains undefeated. Yet, these details are not enough for new division champ Ilia Topuria to entertain his callout.
“El Matador” successfully snatched the belt from Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298 last Saturday, making him the new champion of the featherweight division. Prior to his success, the fighter was already receiving callouts, including one from bantamweight champ Sean O’Malley. After that, Evloev joined the party after making a callout to the Spanish fighter on social media. Topuria would not say no to the fight but said that it is not something he would entertain at the moment. The reason? Evloev’s finish record.
With an 18-0-0 record, Evloev is an interesting choice for Topuria, who boasts a 14-0 slate. Despite that, the new champ believes that how a fighter’s victories were achieved has a huge weight on his decision to welcome callouts. With this, the 27-year-old encouraged the fellow fighter to first make finishes in his record.
“Movsar’s a good fight for me. I would love to fight him,” Topuria said during the UFC 298 post-fight interview. “But the guy has eight fights in the UFC: eight decisions, zero submissions, zero knockouts. … Man, come on. He needs to finish someone.
“Maybe they can find someone from his hometown. Maybe he can fight with his dad or something and finish him. But he needs to finish someone because the record he has right now – yeah, it seems nice: He’s undefeated. But the guy didn’t finish anyone, So he needs to do something.”
Topuria’s dismissal of the callout follows his earlier statement expressing his disinterest in facing the top contenders of the class weight. According to the fighter, his plan is to first face Conor McGregor, whose comeback remains unknown. The fighter reiterated his view, saying the fighters in class weight “don’t make any sense … right now.” And while he didn’t mention McGregor, the champ demanded “new challengers – new ones.” Topuria didn’t name anyone but suggested eyeing those who will participate in upcoming fights.
