The reign in Spain

Ilia Topuria professed all fight week that he would be the new featherweight champion Saturday night – a tall task considering Alexander Volkanovski was making his sixth title defense and had never lost at 145 pounds.

And with one punch, it all came true. Topuria, a German native who was raised in Georgia and has lived in Spain most of his life, blitzed the champ in the second round and connected with a right to the body and a left to the head. As Volkanovski backed against the cage, Topuria delivered a picture-perfect right to the jaw, putting Volkanovski down and out.

“I don’t need the judges,” Topuria, 27, said at a postfight press conference. “When I’m fighting, they can go and take their time to break and rest a little bit. The guy was really fast, very fast jabs. His movements, his kicks, he surprised me a little bit. It took me a little bit of time to study him and I had to knock him out in the second round.

“I was just waiting to find my timing. He caught me with a couple of punches and he was celebrating like, ‘Ha ha ha!’ I was waiting for my turn for that. The game plan since the first moment was to do long combinations, not just one or two punches, combinations of three, four, five punches because it’s more difficult to read.”

All week, one statistic loomed over, and was scoffed at by, the 35-yearold Volkanovski: UFC fighters 35 and older fighting for titles at 170 pounds and lighter were a shocking 1-21 against younger fighters.

And now that record is 1-22. Volkanovski made no excuses after the fight and shot down chatter that he had come back too soon after getting knocked out by lightweight champion Islam Makhachev in October.

“You can’t take anything away from Topuria,” said Volkanovski, who won the first round on all three judges’ scorecards. “If he puts a hand on you like that, you’re going to go down. I don’t care, that’s just that. That was a clean right hand and I think no matter who you are, you let one of those land on your chin while you’re caught there, you’re probably going down.”

Topuria said the UFC must now make its debut in Spain, where his popularity is surging as one of the UFC’s brightest European stars. White says Spain will happen and Volkanovski believes it’s where they should have his rematch, which Topuria said he’d acquiesce.

“I’ve been reigning champ for how long? I’ve been a bit of a company man,” Volkanovski said. “Went back up on short notice. I fought Max (Holloway) three times. You name it, I’ve done it individually for a long time, so I think I deserve that and it’s going to be different next time.”