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Ilia Topuria is pretty darn good.

The undefeated 15-0 Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Featherweight champion has risen to superstardom just as he anticipated. While all have fallen before him, Topuria still has plenty left to accomplish at age 27.

Regarding his technical prowess and overall skillset, “El Matador” is one of the planet’s more dangerous and complete fighters. For longtime UFC commentator, Joe Rogan, there’s not much, if anything, Topuria does wrong.

“One of the things that is phenomenal about him is his technique,” Rogan said on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast (h/t MMA Junkie). “His technique is perfect. There’s no fat in his technique. There’s no wasted movements, so when an opportunity presents itself, everything is so fast because the technique is so streamlined.

“Look at how he hits the pads, and when you watch how he hits pads — [Floyd] Mayweather is a great example of that, as well,” he concluded. “Some of the best hands in the sport. Current UFC featherweight champion and knocked out [Alexander] Volkanovski, who is maybe the greatest of all time.”

Match ups in mixed martial arts (MMA) don’t get much better than Topuria’s first title defense. He’ll take on the former Featherweight champion and current Baddest Motherf*cker (BMF) champion in UFC 308’s main event on Oct. 26, 2024.

Rogan, who is also a big Holloway fan, surely can’t wait for the likely epic clash

“See how he’s moving his head when a guy throws punches? Slipping just slightly? The speed, man,” Rogan said. “The f*cking speed of that. Look at the hand speed. F*cking incredible. If you know how difficult that is to do and do it that fast. I mean, these are like five, six punches a second and just phenomenal technique.”

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

It’s no secret that former two-division UFC champion Daniel Cormier always keeps a watchful eye on the best wrestlers coming up in the United States.

As a two-time Olympian and current coach of a high-school wrestling team, Cormier stays close to the sport he grew up loving before becoming a fighter, but it turns out he actually interacted with a future American gold medalist several years ago and didn’t even know it. Primarily training out of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Cormier crosses paths with a lot of fighters, Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners, and wrestlers who also work out at the gym — and that included future 2024 Olympic gold medalist Amit Elor.

“A little backstory, Amir Elor used to always be around the Bay area with a woman named Carolyn Wester, she coached at a club called Wrestling Prep and she teaches wrestling,” Cormier said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “She’s a lady that coaches and she’s a tremendous coach, very smart lady.

“She would bring Amit into [American Kickboxing Academy]. I didn’t know who she was but she would wrestle with the boys. I have all these pictures of Amit, and Carolyn would take pictures of Amit with the team. That’s one thing they do in MMA gyms. At the end of practice, everybody gets together for a photo. Amit’s in a lot of those pictures.”

Elor’s work obviously paid off. She captured gold at 68kg with a stunning run through the 2024 Olympics, ultimately outscoring her opponents by a ridiculous margin of 31-2. At 20 years old, she also became the youngest American to ever win a gold medal in wrestling — a record once held by Henry Cejudo, who won his gold medal in 2008.

None of it came to a surprise to Elor’s coach, who told Cormier before the Olympics started that she was going to dominate the field.

“Carolyn goes, ‘Amit’s wrestling [at the Olympics],’ and I go, ‘The little girl from the gym?’” Cormier recounted. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, and she’s going to win.’ I’m like, ‘She’s that good?’ And she was like, ‘She’s going to win.’”

Not only did Elor win in emphatic fashion, she shared that glory with her teammates after the U.S. women went home with two gold medals — the other won by Sarah Hildebrandt — a silver from 20-year-old phenom Kennedy Blades, and a bronze for Helen Maroulis.

“She killed it,” Cormier said of Elor. “That first match, talk about bad luck. The World Champion from the year before from that weight class gets the World Champion from the weight up in her very first match. [Elor] destroys her. She went onto kill the rest of the field after that.”

While Elor’s focus remains on wrestling, especially with the 2028 Olympics happening in her home state of California, she has a lot of time left to accomplish even more goals.

Elor could potentially wrestle across at least three Olympic cycles and would only be 28 when it was all over.

When the day comes that she hangs her singlet up for the final time, Cormier believes Elor is destined to make waves in MMA.

“She’s going to fight,” Cormier said. “She’s going to be a fighter. For as good as she is in wrestling, she does really well in judo, she does tremendous in jiu-jitsu. If she does start doing [MMA] competitively, they’re going to be in trouble.”

First things first, Cormier wants Elor to stick with wrestling because she’s going to remain a huge asset to the American team. As much as Cormier loved his UFC career and the money and accomplishments that came along with it, he knows there’s nothing quite like chasing Olympic glory.

“We can’t lose Amit Elor,” Cormier said. “I love when great wrestlers come into mixed martial arts, but I’m always for them doing it after they’re done chasing their Olympic dreams. You don’t get to do that again. If you have an opportunity to be the best in the world, you chase that as long as you can and then you go do something different. I don’t think it should be coming earlier than needed.

“You go and wrestle as long as you need to wrestle, and then you come to try and make the money as the UFC fighter.”

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It has been a long journey full of ups and downs for Dan Hooker to work his back into the top five of the lightweight division.

After defeating Mateusz Gamrot at UFC 305, he’s riding a three-fight winning streak which has seen him bounce back from consecutive losses.

Hooker, at one stage, had just one win in his last five Octagon outings and that came after he made it into the top five for the first time in his career. And in his opinion, that skid was caused by a few crucial mistakes he made.

He has learned a lot in this four-year-period and is now confident that he won’t make the same mistakes that he did last time.

Dan Hooker Says That Fighting Michael Chandler At UFC 257 Was A Mistake On His Part

Hooker is now seemingly on the verge of what could be a title eliminator against the likes of Charles Oliveira or Justin Gaethje.

Though he took big fights against Dustin Poirier and the debuting Michael Chandler the last time he was in this position, he believes that the latter in particular was a mistake.

“Iron” Mike would hit the ground running in the promotion by stopping the Kiwi fighter in the opening round in Abu Dhabi.

Hooker didn’t need to risk his ranking against a new arrival like Chandler, even if competing in the co-main event of a Conor McGregor card was a big opportunity for him.

The major issue with taking this fight is that it took place during the COVID-19 pandemic where New Zealand had very strict regulations, which compromised his preparations.

Having admitted in an interview with ESPN Australia that he has a whole new level of respect for the team around him, Hooker said that he has learned from the missteps that he has made in his career and isn’t going to waste this opportunity.

“I kind of have learnt that from my first rodeo, is to just kind of not do anything dumb this time around. I mean the last time I was number five, I agreed to fight Michael Chandler. Gave Michael Chandler a shot, it was his first fight in the UFC, I flew to Abu Dhabi so other side of the world with absolutely no coaches and went and fought him with a guy I’d been training for six months in my corner. so it was not the smartest of decisions so I guess this time around, I’m just not gonna do anything dumb or sell my title shot again.”

Read also: Israel Adesanya’s Coach Says Du Plessis Defeat Better Than ‘Unexplainable’ Strickland Upset: ‘It Was A Good Loss…’

Continue Reading Dan Hooker On Learning His Lessons From Initial Top Five Stint, Vows Not To ‘Sell His Title Shot Again’ at MMA News.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal won’t be making his return from retirement as scheduled at the upcoming BKFC 66 card on Sept. 13 in Hollywood, Fla.

The Bellator and Strikeforce veteran, who last competed in 2019, suffered an injury in training that forced him off BKFC 66, where he was expected to face BKFC champion Dave Mundell. Promotion officials confirmed the news to MMA Fighting on Wednesday.

Lawal’s comeback arose unexpectedly after he retired five years ago mainly due to a long list of injuries that continued to pile up over the years. Following the end of his fighting career, Lawal turned his attention to coaching, where he’s become one of the lead instructors at American Top Team in Florida.

With his body healed up and still training alongside many of the top fighters in the world, Lawal decided to return to action but told MMA Fighting that he isn’t planning on sticking around for more than maybe a couple of fights.

Now it appears he’ll have to wait until a later date to make that return.

As for Mundell, he won’t stay on the Sept. 13 card against a new opponent but instead is expected to shift to a different BKFC event later in the year.

BKFC 66 moves forward with Alberto Blas defending his bantamweight title against Ryan Reber, while Howard Davis takes on James Brown in the new co-main event.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Kayla Harrison has nothing but respect for Alex Pereira.

Earlier this year, Harrison and Pereira shared a fight card for the first time, with both picking up big wins at UFC 300. That evening, Harrison made her UFC and women’s bantamweight debut with a second-round submission of former champion Holly Holm, and Pereira successfully defended his light heavyweight title with a first-round knockout of former champion Jamahal Hill. After the event was over, the two shared a moment backstage where Harrison — a two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo — even saw fit to give Pereira a yellow belt, despite “Poatan” not using any grappling skills in his UFC 300 matchup.

Speaking recently with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Harrison explained why.

“A yellow belt is a joke, obviously,” Harrison told said. “You don’t normally give adults yellow belts, so that was part of it. … And to be fair to him, he was showing me the videos of him training and he was kicking [ass]. I wish that he would release this one, oh my God — he did the move I taught him and then he did the move you do if the move doesn’t work. I was like, ‘Dude, you look like a judoka!’ It’s crazy how fast he picks stuff up. He looked like a legit judo [player]. He foot-swept the shit out of this kid. Like slipping on a banana peel.

“So I gave him a yellow belt as a joke.”

Like Harrison, Pereira also came to MMA after an extensive career in another combat sport: Kickboxing. A two-division GLORY champion, Pereira only joined UFC in 2021 and has already carved out a Hall of Fame worthy career, winning titles in two weight classes, headlining multiple marquee events, and earning Fighter of the Year honors in 2022. He’s also become one of the biggest stars in all of MMA and is the current frontrunner for 2024 Fighter of the Year honors as well — and Harrison couldn’t be happier for him.

“He’s literally living his best life, isn’t he?” Harrison said. “He doesn’t speak English but his character comes across. I think that’s what makes a superstar special: You can feel their aura and their character. I don’t even know if you call it charisma, but that thing. He has charisma.

“I’m just happy for him. When you hear his story and when you hear — he probably doesn’t talk about it a lot but he was an alcoholic and he started competing. Dude, that’s badass. I just love to see it.”

Pereira recently headlined UFC 303, knocking out Jiri Prochazka in their 205-pound title rematch. Afterward, Pereira said he was open to defending his title against Magomed Ankalaev, or perhaps moving up to heavyweight in an attempt to become the first three-division champion in UFC history.

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