Ilia Topuria will headline the historic UFC event at the White House on June 14, unifying belts with interim lightweight champion Justin Gaethje. Topuria’s manager Malki Kawa revealed Monday that the deal was only done on Saturday morning, just hours before the announcement during the UFC 326 broadcast on CBS.
Kawa also manages Jon Jones, a former UFC light heavyweight and heavyweight champion who was very vocal about his intention to be on the card against Alex Pereira, but the Brazilian will instead
face Ciryl Gane for the interim heavyweight title in the co-main event slot. UFC CEO Dana White said recently that Jones was “never, ever, ever” going to headline UFC White House card.
However, Kawa revealed on the Anik & Florian Podcast that they did have negotiations with the promotion for that event.
“I don’t know if that’s true because there was a negotiation there also as well,” Kawa said. “It just kind of didn’t go anywhere after a while. Wednesday I got asked, ‘Would you guys want to do this or that?’ And we said, ‘Absolutely.’ They gave us a number. We said, ‘Absolutely not.’ And then we didn’t hear anything after that. So, to me, there was no fight going on as of Wednesday afternoon.”
“They couldn’t get there and then fell apart, so then they moved on to other stuff,” he continued. “Now, one thing I will say though is, I do believe when I got that call on Wednesday, they were talking to everybody. That’s why when he says these guys weren’t supposed to be on the card, I believe that. Because even the way it was said to me, ‘Who do you want to fight? You guys can fight this guy, you guys can fight that guy,’ the money that was offered was small in comparison to what we had already said we wanted to fight those guys from before. Whether it was White House card, International Fight Week or it’s next week, it doesn’t matter. It was more about getting the numbers. And when the numbers came, it was like, ‘alright.’ It was more like, ‘if this fight could happen, here’s the numbers that you guys down for.’ And we’re like, ‘Not at those numbers.’ So there was no fight..”
Kawa said he had talks with UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell weeks ago asking if Topuria would be on the card, otherwise he would fly back to Spain. If an offer came later, he said, that would be “way more costly” to bring Topuria’s camp back to the United States. That’s what happened in the end, and it ultimately helped them in negotiations for a better deal with the UFC to make Topuria vs. Gaethje.
“If you don’t have a deal in place, and then you’re talking about you’re going to announce something Saturday and the announcement is related to our negotiation,” Kawa said. “Absolutely, I think we the advantage was [ours].”
Kawa said that rumors of a potential Islam Makhachev fight with Topuria being called off at the eleventh hour was inaccurate. According to Topuria’s manager, they agreed to the idea of facing either Gaethje or Makhachev, but the welterweight champion is currently dealing with an injury.
“We had our choice and we said yes to Islam and we said yes to Gaethje,” Kawa said. “It was just more about the numbers and the finances. When you talk about leverage, if somebody really needs something and you get pushed up against the wall at midnight, yeah, it’s probably in your advantage because if at that point, if you’re not doing the deal with Jon [Jones] and if Kayla [Harrison] can’t fight and Amanda [Nunes] can’t fight, and if Islam can’t fight, and if Conor [McGregor] ain’t fighting, then who else are you guys talking about? So I think that at that it obviously worked out to our favor, if that makes sense.”
Kawa had a cardiac ablation procedure on Thursday, and it caused a halt in conversations with the UFC, and he only got in touch with Campbell at 11:30pm Friday. The negotiations went on until 11:00am on Saturday, when “all the terms on that deal to fight Gaethje” were finally agreed.
“There was a lot of stuff that got discussed, a lot of different things, and that was kind of what happened in its totality,” Kawa said. “So Dana’s not lying, right? There was no Islam fight. We agreed to fighting Islam if that’s what they wanted to do. But the terms and all that was not there. He said that none of these guys were supposed to be on the card.”
