Name: JRE MMA Show #166 with Ilia Topuria
Uploaded: 2025-04-16T17:00:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #166 with Ilia Topuria' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #166 with Ilia Topuria' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-04-16. Transcript available.

JRE MMA Show #166 with Ilia Topuria

Joe Rogan podcast check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan
podcast by night. All day.
My man. What's happening? Pleasure. No, please. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank
you very much for having me here. My honor. I'm very excited about this new
thing you're doing. I'm very excited about your journey into the lightweight
division.
Something that I felt very excited also about that. What are you walking around
at? What do you walk around at when you were fighting at 45? I'm going to tell
you in kilos. I walk around 80, 82. What is that, Jamie? Like 160, 170? 175?
180. So you were losing quite a bit of weight. 35 pounds? 25, 30 pounds. That
was the hardest part of the fight game for me.
I wasn't enjoying all the last couple of fights that I had because it's like I
had to become more professional in the weight cut than in a fight game, you
know?
And it was taking a lot of time and energy for me. And I'm like, my dream is to
become a world champion. I want to end up this chapter that I have that I
started in 145.
And now it's time to really enjoy it. And I'm very excited about that. I
already have one fight and 155.
Jai Herbert.
Jai Herbert.
Yeah. I really wish the UFC would eliminate weight cutting. I really wish there
was a way.
Why do I allow to do that?
I don't. It's sanctioned cheating that everybody has to do. It's like you're,
you know, I mean, if you're saying you're 180 pounds, you're not really 145,
right?
So it's crazy that you're the 145 pound champion, but you're a 180 pound man.
It's kind of nuts.
Yeah. But at the same time, if you go to the next weight class, you are playing
with a disadvantage because the guy in the next division is cutting a lot of
weight.
So if you don't do that, at the end of the day, you walk inside the octagon and
you are the smaller guy.
Yeah. Like Islam. Islam Akachev is huge. I mean, that guy, how he makes 155 is,
I don't understand it. Every time I stand next to him, I'm like, how are you 155?
How much do you think he walks around? He's got to be 190-ish in the 190 range.
He's got to be. That's what he looks like to me.
I never saw him in a person. Yeah. He's thick. He's thick and big. I mean, he's
not a small, he's not a 155 pound man. It's just so silly. The whole thing is
just, it's an old thing that we kept for no reason.
And I feel like they should blow all the weight classes. I've talked to Dana
about this. I actually talked to Ari Emanuel about this when they first bought
the UFC.
I said, the first thing you should do is get rid of this. Get rid of the weight
cutting and just add a bunch of weight classes.
You know, because some of the weight class gaps, like the gap between 70 and 85
and then 85 and 205, they're too big. The gaps are too big. 20 pounds is nuts.
I would do something with the drug test. Like if I go to your home to make the
drug test, I put you in the scale. If you walk around like 8% or 10% over your
weight, I would obligate you to go in the next weight class.
Just to give you an example, for example, if you're fighting a hundred
kilograms, I'm going to say 10 kilograms and I go to your house, I do the drug
test. I put you in the scale and you weigh this 110 kilograms. I will force you
to go to the next weight class.
Yeah. I think that's realistic. That makes sense. And I think that they should
have more weight classes because the weight class gaps are just too large.
Or maybe that's an option also.
Yeah. I mean, at the lower weight classes, it's 10 pounds, which seems
reasonable. But really, at the lower weight classes, like 125 and 135, it could
easily be 5 pounds. 5 pounds is reasonable.
But Dana doesn't want like 12 weight classes or 15, 20 weight classes like
boxing has. He wants it to be like the UFC has now. But it's not enough.
I don't really know the real reason behind that, but I would love to talk to
Dana and ask him this question also because it's kind of dangerous also for the
guys.
And many times you put on a show for the people and you don't really know if
they're going to make the weight.
Right. Exactly. And they're going to be compromised. I mean, there's a lot of
guys who fight just deeply dehydrated from the day before.
And even though they've rehydrated themselves, their brain's not rehydrated.
Yeah, exactly. It's not smart. And it's not. It's also not necessary.
Like, why would it would make for better fights? Why would you want someone to
be physically compromised 24 hours before they're fighting? It doesn't make any
sense at all.
But at the same time, the weight cut takes something out from you. That's crazy.
It's like putting a dog inside the room for 20 days without any food and you
open the door and you put them in a different room with full of food.
It's like the same thing. You know, when I'm cutting the weight, I'm a
different person. I feel that I'm like, my mind goes different. My thought
process is different. Everything is so different at that moment. I'm not so
kind when I'm cutting weight.
Yeah, more focused, dialed in. Exactly.
Dominic Cruz says it's a good thing. He says he likes weight cutting because it
gets you dialed in. He says it gets you completely dialed in for a fight.
How much he cuts? I don't think he cuts that much. That's why. For 35. That's
why he likes it.
Ask Alex Pereira if he likes it. You know, because when he was fighting at 85,
he was weighing in at 85 and then fighting in the cage at 225, 226, which is
crazy.
I don't know how that guy was making 185. I don't know.
That's crazy because he's huge and he's so tall. Well, how about Dreykus Duplessis?
How the fuck is he 185? That guy's huge.
Yeah, that guy's huge also. There's a lot of these guys like, but it's very deceptive
because the general public thinks that's a 185 pound man, but he's not.
Dreykus is probably, when he gets into the cage, he's well into the 220s. He's
a big guy.
I don't know in what weight he walks around, but he's a huge guy also.
When he was fighting in 170, he was big also. He was almost killing himself.
The craziest one was Anthony Rumble Johnson. Do you remember Anthony?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anthony, I ran into him once in between fights and I said, how much do you
weigh? He said 230.
Wow.
He was fighting 170.
He switched how many weight classes. He started from 170, went to light heavyweight,
and then he ended up fighting in the heavyweight division.
He went to middleweight and didn't make weight. He missed weight and lost that
fight, and then he fought heavyweight outside the UFC, and then came back and
fought light heavyweight in the UFC.
You know, something similar happened to me also. I started fighting in the bantamweight
division.
Really?
Yeah. Before the UFC, like in cage warriors, when I was fighting in the cage
warriors, I actually missed the weight also when I was fighting for the belt.
I was fighting at that time in the bantamweight division. Then I kept fighting
in the featherweight, and now I'm in the lightweight.
I hope I don't end up fighting in the welterweight.
How old were you when you first started fighting?
An MMA, you asking, or?
Well, when did you first start martial arts?
With four years old, my dad put me with my brother in judo. Then we went to
Georgia. We kept practicing with the Greco-Roman wrestling, and then we moved
to Spain when I was 15 years old, and completely by chance, we find the gym and
we started training the MMA, the mixed martial arts.
Totally by chance?
Totally by chance.
Totally by chance.
Wow. So, were you a mixed martial arts fan at all?
I didn't know anything about the mixed martial arts. I didn't know anything
about the BJJ, the ground game, any fucking thing.
Wow.
So, we went to Spain, and we wanted to keep with the same discipline as we were
doing in Georgia with the Greco-Roman wrestling, but they don't have the
culture of that sport.
So, we were a little bit sad, you know, because we wanted that sport. My
brother was really, really good on that. So, my mom was working, and he saw a
man with the cauliflower ears.
He went to, she went to him, and she asked him, like, what you're doing?
Because my kids want to do wrestling. Do you train in some gym or something?
And he said, no, I'm doing the BJJ. Bring your kids, and I'm going to show you
the gym.
She came to home, and my dad and my mom, they started to convince us, like,
there's a gym, they are practicing, like, Jiu-Jitsu, MMA, all the sports, and I
was like, but what the fuck is this? I don't know what's this.
And my dad started to show me the videos of the Grecies. He told me, like, this
is one of the best sports in the world right now. You are going to, guys, love
it, this and that.
And at that day, we went to the gym, and I felt in love since the first second.
Well, it's actually a great base to start out from, starting with Judo and then
Greco roaming wrestling, and then going into Jiu-Jitsu.
It's really great, because you already have an established grappling base.
It's great, of course. My recommendation for everyone is, if you want to have a
career in MMA, you should start with wrestling.
Because for me, personally, because this is my personal experience, that it's
much easier to learn in the future, the boxing, than start with boxing and
learn the wrestling.
Really?
For me, yes, I think so, and I saw that in many people.
But how old were you when you first started boxing?
17 years old.
That's fairly old, like, when you think about how high-level your striking is.
Of course, it is.
Yeah.
But when I started, I was like, okay, I'm very good with the wrestling.
I can take people down.
I can control them.
I have a great ground game.
But what if I go to the highest competition, and I find some adversities?
I have to be able to fight in the striking, also.
So I have to develop my game in the striking.
And I start from that.
And I start with my brother.
We were, like, the first people to go inside the gym, and the last ones to
leave it.
So we were starting every day, all day, like, so obsessed.
We were watching, like, all the videos of Julio Cesar Chavez, of Canelo, all
that, practicing all the techniques, and then putting in interaction, the sparrings,
and all that.
And I was, like, finding my style that I really like to do.
Well, it's interesting because Spain doesn't have a long history of mixed
martial arts.
So, like, you are the first champion from Spain in the UFC.
So it's very interesting that you got in there as a young man, and there wasn't
really, like, a big established community yet.
So I was the first guy to get into the top 15, the top 10, the top 5, and then
the world champion.
We had a guy in Spain who fought in the UFC.
I don't know if you remember him.
Enrique Wasabi.
Okay.
He did the ultimate fighter.
Then we have another guy, also, Joel Alvarez.
He's doing a great job also.
But before that, we didn't have anyone in the UFC yet.
So when you first started training, were there amateur competitions in Spain?
Yeah.
There was amateur MMA?
I made three fights in amateur, and then I started with a professional game.
I did four fights in Spain, and at some point it was so difficult to find a
fight for me that I had to start to travel in the European territory to get a
fight.
Yeah, and everything started from that.
But it's fascinating because a lot of world champions generally, well, there's
a good percentage of them come from an established gym that already has elite
high-level competition.
But it seems like that's not the case with your gym.
No, it wasn't.
So I don't know.
I don't know what was the reason, to be honest, to came this far.
I don't know.
Well, that's always the question with champions.
Like, are champions born or are they bred?
Because there's gyms that develop, like Marvin Hagler came out of the Petronelli
Brothers gym in Brockton, Massachusetts.
They're not known for world championship fighters, but Marvin Hagler is one of
the greatest of all time.
It's like there was something inside of him that made him excel.
The same thing.
There 