Ilia Topuria will face possibly the best opponent of his MMA career in two months. The #5 ranked undefeated featherweight is coming into his UFC 298 bout against champion Alexander Volkanovski with a lot of hype and momentum behind him owing to his stellar striking skills and flamboyant personality.

Not afraid to ruffle feathers, ‘El Matador’ has taken to social media to blast Volkanovski and slag him off. He has even gotten into a war of words with bantamweight champion Sean O’Malley recently. Islam Makhachev and former undefeated champ Khabib Nurmagomedov’s coach Javier Mendez have now weighed in on a potential bout between the two.

Khabib Nurmagomedov’s coach speaks highly of Topuria

In the latest episode of his podcast, Javier Mendez was asked by his co-host what he made of Ilia Topuria feuding with Sean O’Malley and who he thought had the edge in a potential fight. The coach revealed that he had a chance to get a good look at ‘El Matador’ when he was working out at the UFC’s performance institute in Las Vegas.

Mendez was impressed by Topuria and felt that O’Malley would find him a challenging opponent if they fought in the future. The coach, however, admitted that he did not have a good read on O’Malley and would not predict how a potential fight between the two would go until he got a good, up-close look at ‘Suga’.

“I don’t see him [Sean O’Malley] manhandling Topuria for any reason. You know, I trained yesterday and Topuria was working out at the UFC training center. Guy’s pretty solid, you know. He’s pretty solid, man. You know, I don’t know, I haven’t seen Sean O’Malley personally, so until I see him personally like I’ve seen Topuria in person, I’ll make my judgment then. But I can tell you that I’m very impressed with Topuria,” Mendez said.

And Topuria has the chance to make a statement and show the MMA world just how good he is in his upcoming bout against Volkanovski.

Volkanovski promises to humble Topuria

Ilia Topuria will face Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 298 in Anaheim, California on February 17. Topuria has blasted the champion, labeling him old and vowing to retire. ‘Volk’, considered the greatest UFC featherweight of all time, however, has vowed to teach the arrogant Spaniard a lesson.

In a recent interview days ahead of UFC 298, the former rugby player reiterated his promise to show Topuria that there are levels to this game and ‘El Matador’ has not faced anyone as good as him yet.

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“He thinks he’s the best, but he’s going to be shown there are levels to this. As I’ve been saying in interviews, you’ve got to earn your stripes and he hasn’t been there. He thinks he’s the man, he thinks he’s at the top of the division already, and he hasn’t even faced anyone right up there,” Volkanovski said.

So who do you think will win in their fight?

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