“I’ve been in the worst situation a fighter can possibly be in,” Topuria told Spanish outlet ABC Diario in a preview clip released Thursday. “I’ve experienced the worst day of my career. What’s worse than that? Dying?”
It was the first loss of Topuria’s professional career, and it came in the most public setting imaginable. He entered the fight as a heavy favourite, with talk already circulating about a move to welterweight and a shot at becoming a three-division champion. Instead, Gaethje’s toughness and power wore him down across four rounds, and his corner stopped the fight at the end of the fourth, leaving Topuria with deep cuts and heavy bruising and a 17-1 record. He has spoken before about how hard the aftermath was, recalling that he looked in the mirror the next morning and refused to accept what he saw. This time, he went further, raising a question few expected to hear from him. “I’ve achieved everything, and after this fight, what else?” he said. “Maybe I’ll even retire.”
Retirement, though, sounds like a conversation for later. Topuria made clear he intends to fight again, and soon. “From April onward is when we are considering returning,” he said. “I have always been aware that in this life, not everything is a bed of roses, even though I’ve never had it before.” He promised a return “like you have never seen him before,” and Dana White has confirmed the promotion is planning his comeback for 2027.
He also has an opponent in mind, and it is a familiar one. Topuria’s rivalry with Paddy Pimblett has run for years, dating back to Pimblett’s remarks about Topuria’s homeland of Georgia, and it has never been settled in the Octagon. “Paddy, Paddy, Paddy,” Topuria said. “I eat him like a sausage, which he is.” The matchup has an added twist: both men have now lost to Gaethje this year, Pimblett at UFC 324 in January and Topuria in June, which means a meeting between them would be as much about rebuilding a path back to the title as settling a personal score.
The lightweight division has moved on quickly in Topuria’s absence. Gaethje is sidelined into 2027, and Arman Tsarukyan has staked his claim to the next title shot after knocking out Mauricio Ruffy at UFC 331. That leaves Topuria needing a statement in his return, and a fight with Pimblett would give him the biggest stage available outside a title fight. Whether that return is the start of a second run at the belt or, as he hinted, the beginning of a farewell, is a question Topuria himself does not yet seem ready to answer.
