Joe Rogan is worried that Ilia Topuria may come back too soon following a hellacious beating at the hands of Justin Gaethje back in June.
Many considered Topuria unstoppable when he faced Gaethje on the White House lawn, only to witness Gaethje shrug off Ilia’s hardest shots and fire back damaging blows that blinded “El Matador” in both eyes. Three months later, and Topuria has re-emerged from a media blackout and seems to be promoting an imminent return.
Too soon? Perhaps, according to Rogan.
“It’s
going to be interesting to see how he rebounds because that was a lot of damage,” Rogan said on the latest episode of his podcast. “Two fractured orbitals, they had to stop the fight in between rounds. And he took big punches from a guy who’s got f–king rocks in his hands. He’s had a couple of months, but he probably needs like six months before he’s even sparring again.”
“He’s a very mentally strong guy, and I think he will bounce back in that regard,” Rogan continued. “It’s just there’s also the reality of how much damage, and only he knows how much damage he actually took in that fight, how that affects him as well … there’s only a few of those kind of fights that you could have in your career, and you got to be very careful how you recover from those.”
Rogan went on to cite Alexander Volkanovski as an example of a fighter who returned too soon after a bad loss.
“A lot of fighters, a lot of great fighters, have made a mistake of coming back too soon,” he said. “Volkanovski is one that I point to all the time, who’s arguably the greatest featherweight of all time. He is one of the most masterful fighters in the game. He took a short, short notice fight with Islam [Makhachev] in the rematch and got head-kicked, and then I think it was only four months later that he was fighting Ilia.”
“And that is crazy. That’s a crazy thing to do. He took a full head kick, shinned the dome, gets KO’d, and then four months later he’s fighting the f–king scariest challenger that he’s ever had to face.”
Now there’s talk of the UFC throwing Justin Gaethje and Ilia Topuria right back in the cage for an immediate rematch. That’s a pretty big challenge for Topuria given what happened in their last fight. Would he accept the fight? We’re sure he would. Would his team prefer a ‘soft rebound’ against Paddy Pimblett? We’re sure they would too.
There’s one good thing about an immediate rematch against Gaethje: the new lightweight champ has said he’s not interested in fighting again this year. That gives Topuria a few more months to recover, if the UFC goes that route. Otherwise … Ilia vs. Paddy in December, anyone?
