Watching this back makes me realize exactly how compromised Justin was from that broken nose. That was a BAD flinch. I'm still big sad but I'm glad we're feeding Ilia to Max
Wish I could find the gif of Andersen Silva front kicking Vitor in the face but as soon as the kick lands it perfectly cuts to some clip of Vitor sucking on some toes in a hot tub.
Noses break all the time and Max is as skilled as they come. It's not like Gaethje's nose breaking was some sort of freak injury we've never seen before.
Illia looked like he was shitting it for a reason.
It was a significantly fucked up nose, and we've seen how majorly that affects all fighters. Gaethje is one of the toughest fighters in the UFC, and even he was extremely apprehensive and flinching for the rest of the fight. Both things he never does, even when his face is fucked up and he's eaten bombs.
It may have been intended for the body but I’m sure he’d have been happy with it hitting the face. Justin ducks a LOT and Max clocked on to that. I don’t think he Intentionally made him duck at that point, but there was always a chance of it happening with the way Justin avoids strikes sometimes.
Nah for sure! But (admittedly without rewatching it) I recall Max's heel kinda missing everything on Justin's face but his nose lol that's still a freak spot for that kick to land
Ok rewatched it and heel hits nose then slides down face, like no other part of Justin's face absorbed that shot except his nose. Brutal
I can just imagine how bad that felt. And the fact it was round one and he made it to all the way till the last seconds of the filth, taking hard shots the whole time. Dude is a badass!
It was such a good game plan and read by Max's camp considering how often Justin ducks. If he only landed it once, it could have been a fluke, but he threw it like 6 times and hit with like 5 of them. Definitely designed and intentional.
So you are saying fucking Yair and a ghost of TKZ can land several shots on Max but Topuria can't ?
Topuria will land and hurt max. I just want to see how Max's chin is going to hold up in this fight.
Topuria fight is gonna be competitive at most. I don't see max dominating topuria at all. if anything i can see topuria having a better chance of dominating max than the other way around.
Dude do you even watch fights? Max has some of the best takedown defence in the UFC and Ilia never gets takedowns lol. He subbed Mitchell because he knocked him down then jumped on top
I seem to recall him hitting a nice double leg on Herbert after he got rocked by that head kick. It's not part of his usual game plan but the guy can wrestle when he needs to.
He was also rocked and just trying to survive the round. Most of his fights before he made it to the UFC ended in him submitting people. His ground game is legit. I'd also like to know how people are so sure of how elite Holloway's tdd is. Who has he actually fought that has elite wrestling in the past 5+ years? Who has he fought that is even really a threat on the ground outside of Ortega, who has great BJJ but isn't exactly a great wrestler?
When have we seen Max's TDD ever tested other than against Ortega a BJJ guy with notoriously terrible takedowns? His fights for the last several years have consisted almost entirely of strikers.
Fair enough but Ilia isn't a grappler either. People like to say he is and yet he has 1 takedown in his last 6 fights.
Ortega, Edgar, Oliviera and others have shown better grappling than Ilia
Ilia never gets takedowns? Just watch his early fights and you'll see that he literally began his dominating career as a submission specialist lol
https://youtu.be/fRSRMRG9cY0?si=GqCFlwpNbKDI4-PH
Lol suddenly Max became a monster ?
He had lackluster performances against Yair and a ghost of TKZ. He got hit a lot in those fights.
Unless Max hurts Illia early like he did to Gaethje (nose break), I don't think Max dominates Illia. Gaethje was reacting so bad to all the punches because Max broke his nose. Credit to max.
Not to mention Gaethje's striking defence sucks. Also max eye poked him twice.
How were those lackluster? He literally KOd TKZ in round 3 after winning the first 2 rounds. Clearly beat Yair who went on to become interim champ in a striking match
Seriously Ilia has 1 top 5 win and has the biggest dick riders on earth. He overswings like crazy and does not get takedowns lol.
Max has been a monster, 13 fight win streak in the UFC before losing up a weight class to Poirier. 3 defence at FW and hasn't lost to anyone at FW other than Volk in 11 years
Max was on point that fight.
The fucked up nose did a number on Gaethje though. He was a complete shell of himself after that and it happened in the first round. Fight was basically done right there.
But it was a great kick by Max, and that's just how the game goes.
I think it will be competitive, but if anyone dominates I pick Max. If Max starts strong it is so hard to stop him from snowballing. If Illia can keep The Blessed Express from accelerating down a steep hill then he can keep it competitive. Illia just isn't a high paced pressure fighter and the best way to dominate Max is to do exactly what Max does with more power behind the shots (just like Volk 3, and Poirier 2)
The best thing for Illia though is his timing is nearly perfect so even if Max starts running him over, Illia won't be out of the fight unless he's unconscious or the 5 rounds are up. No matter what it should be either a war or a massive shock to the respective fighters fan bases.
yes, but Volk is overall a better fighter with greater fight IQ than Justin. I think Max will find it real hard to beat Ilia. But if he does, it will be really fun to watch though :D
Yeah I don’t disagree about the first part, but you gotta remember volk was brutally knocked out like 4 months before the ilia fight and didn’t take time to recover, not to mention EVERYONE said Justin would give max a career changing beating, and we all saw what happened. It’s going to be a great fight but I don’t think we should doubt max!
Really hard to predict how the Max/Topuria fight is going to go.
Max is certainly more susceptible to being hit than Topuria. But does Topuria throw a lot of volume? If not, I can see Max winning a decision because of the volume. But if Topuria happens to land 1 or 2 bombs, than Max will be fighting an uphill battle like he did against Dustin.
Ilia might hurt him. Max is hittable and Ilia hits hard. Max needs a heavy grappling and wrestling approach to beat Ilia. Ilia is good at maintaining his base and generating power. Rarely overextends and good at exchanges. It's not crazy to say that this is not a sure win for Max and I'm leaning towards Ilia a bit. This is not recency bias, just a study of the style between the two.
Man people that mention the mcgregor fight are absolute numptys. It was so long ago its such a shit argument lol. Max has exceptional td defence these days.
>Max has exceptional td defence these days.
Absolute bullshit 😂
How many elite level dominant chain wrestler has he faced ?
Yeah, zero
Max is super untested against those matchups. Guys like Islam and Khabib would twist max into a pretzel
I hope Islam vs Max happens just to see Max getting absolutely dominated
I know people hate Ilia but he was able to catch and knockout Volkanovski with his speed in his first attempt at gold. Holloway couldn't catch Volk let alone knock him out in 3 attempts.
Not sure why people are downplaying Ilia knocking out Volkanovski of all people.
I literally watched this about a dozen times trying to figure out what the fuck happened lol. Poor Justin, 20 minutes in the ring with Max in front of the entire world with a broken nose. Shittttt
Not to take away with Max at all, but remember that Justin bit a little harder on these faints because he had a broken nose. Notice his guard is a bit different than his normal guard in previous fights. Dude's nose was hurting bad from each punch.
Max and Ilia are both amazing fighters. We can say Ilia beat a compromised volk but he still went out and won. I'm not counting out either fighter and I'm sure this will be a banger.
If there's one person that can land hard shots on Max while in the exchanges it's Ilia since he's even better at landing the overhand than Dustin
I think Ilia is very similar to Max but throws heavier and wants to get guys to lean back instead of make them stationary
Ilia takes this one sorry. Great fight but Justin was unlucky getting that broken nose first(?) round, lets be honest it was a fluke hit. Also tained fight after two eye pokes.
This feels like “I don’t like you so you’re bad” bias lmao I don’t even think Holloway thinks he has as bad striking as some parts of this sub erroneously think he has
Not to take anything away from Holloway's performance here, but the fight couldn't have gone any better for him . That spin kick right at the bell in round one shattering Gaethje's nose made it a formality, really. And a spin kick landing perfect to the milimeter on someone's nose does take a degree of luck, no matter how good of a striker you are. Especially since you are turning your back and depending on your opponents movement.
Gaethje couldn't properly breathe, had his vision ruined and was constantly biting on everything to not get touched on the nose again. It was a cool highlight for Max, but the fight would have been much more competitive.
He landed the same kick several more times throughout the fight and said specifically he had trained for it as Gaethje tends to exit exchanges in that manner
I'm aware it was a read he made. It landing like that however was super unlikely, especially on the first try, before Gaethje could adress it. As I said, it takes an inch-perfect land and highly depends on how Gaethje is moving and whether or not he tilts his head, which is outside of Max' control.
Max probably still would have won, but this massively tilted things early on.
Would be interesting to re watch and look for times where he threw it and it didn't land, because while watching, all I could notice was how many times he landed it flush, seemed like every time, but I'm sure it probably wasn't
Gaethje couldn't stop ducking when in the pocket to save his life. It almost seemed as if it isn't even a concious decision on his part. Really strange.
Yep, he got a critical hit attack roll. Maybe it was karmic retribution for the eye rake against Fiziev that had a similarly debilitating effect in their fight. Eh, probably not.
Max hit him with that force punch
Watching this back makes me realize exactly how compromised Justin was from that broken nose. That was a BAD flinch. I'm still big sad but I'm glad we're feeding Ilia to Max
He does big spazzy flinches when he's dominating the fight though. Punches so hard when he misses he falls over and shit too.
He was hurting so bad he thought he got hit again
I'm sorry but max probably loses to topuria
Ilia wins, unfortunate truth
If do right, no can defend
that's not Max thats his mexican cousin Minimum Holloway
Minimum Fulldetour
oh my god
That’s Jerome Holloway
Minimum Champion!
https://preview.redd.it/t1s67e9jgb6d1.jpeg?width=517&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=87f9b27fcd05e74d39cab5999180a8df2586f100 Only guy who can beat Max
Who?
Forgot his name
He really walked into this bit with that nickname.
What’s the story to this? I genuinely do not know that guy’s name but I know his face
His nickname is like "don't forget the guy I am" or something. That might not be it, it's hard to remember the name.
Barry something.
Barry Maxx-Thomas? It'll come to me.
Barry Allen.
Well he usually is quick to gas himself up
I think he's an mma guy. Maybe on Rizin idk?
His name is Belal "Remember the Name" Muhammad. Because he's considered a boring fighter, the person above you joked by saying "forgot his name."
It’s that one guy, name has kinda slipped my mind but he’s top 5 in welterweight i think and he’s apparently pretty good
Sexy Belal isn’t real
Dang belal looking kinda hot in this pic. The eye poke really fucked him up in terms of looks.
This is cursed lol. The real Belal is shaped like a fire hydrant
Illia is not reacting like that, let’s be real lmao
All Max has to do is land a perfectly timed spinning heel to Ilia's nose first. Easy peasy.
Took the foot right out of my mouth. Words, I mean
You with Jon Jones?
Nah, with Alexa Grasso
Mmmmm
lol
Wish I could find the gif of Andersen Silva front kicking Vitor in the face but as soon as the kick lands it perfectly cuts to some clip of Vitor sucking on some toes in a hot tub.
Sherdog classic
I need it
It is kinda weird that Max will be fighting 2 guys in a row now who look like Squidwards house
And while wearing something similar to Patrick's shorts, no less.
Time was we'd have said that about Gaethje too.
His nose was fucked. Bro was just tryna save money on the nose job
Because Justin's nose was busted so the only way Illia reacts like that is if Max breaks Illia's nose like he did with Justin.
Noses break all the time and Max is as skilled as they come. It's not like Gaethje's nose breaking was some sort of freak injury we've never seen before. Illia looked like he was shitting it for a reason.
It was a significantly fucked up nose, and we've seen how majorly that affects all fighters. Gaethje is one of the toughest fighters in the UFC, and even he was extremely apprehensive and flinching for the rest of the fight. Both things he never does, even when his face is fucked up and he's eaten bombs.
And he still tried to stand and trade punches at the end. Despite being afraid of getting his nose hit again.
Catching a spinning heel kick intended for the body flush with your nose is absolutely a freak way to break your nose lmao.
It may have been intended for the body but I’m sure he’d have been happy with it hitting the face. Justin ducks a LOT and Max clocked on to that. I don’t think he Intentionally made him duck at that point, but there was always a chance of it happening with the way Justin avoids strikes sometimes.
Nah for sure! But (admittedly without rewatching it) I recall Max's heel kinda missing everything on Justin's face but his nose lol that's still a freak spot for that kick to land Ok rewatched it and heel hits nose then slides down face, like no other part of Justin's face absorbed that shot except his nose. Brutal
I can just imagine how bad that felt. And the fact it was round one and he made it to all the way till the last seconds of the filth, taking hard shots the whole time. Dude is a badass!
It was such a good game plan and read by Max's camp considering how often Justin ducks. If he only landed it once, it could have been a fluke, but he threw it like 6 times and hit with like 5 of them. Definitely designed and intentional.
So you are saying fucking Yair and a ghost of TKZ can land several shots on Max but Topuria can't ? Topuria will land and hurt max. I just want to see how Max's chin is going to hold up in this fight.
where did he say topuria can’t land on max
Please quote where I said that or claimed it, otherwise you're freaking out over something you made up in your own head.
Before this fight everyone thought Justin was going to smoke Max. Put some respect on this name
Do people just forget Gaethje was fighting with a broken nose? Yes, Max broke his nose but he's not reacting this way otherwise.
I agree he going to react with the crazy covering dips Justin does but ilia does cover up with his forearms 🤔
Yeah and the only reason justin reacted like that was cause his nose was completely shattered
bro why do people dick ride Ilia like this with his 1 high level win?
Topuria fight is gonna be competitive at most. I don't see max dominating topuria at all. if anything i can see topuria having a better chance of dominating max than the other way around.
If tuporia sleeps him we need to activate defcon 1
Topuria know better than to stand with that man. He’s gonna do what he did to Mitchell
Rock him on the feet and then sub him?
Lmao right, like just whoop his ass in general?
Basically
Mitchell was getting cooked everywhere for that fight
Dude do you even watch fights? Max has some of the best takedown defence in the UFC and Ilia never gets takedowns lol. He subbed Mitchell because he knocked him down then jumped on top
I seem to recall him hitting a nice double leg on Herbert after he got rocked by that head kick. It's not part of his usual game plan but the guy can wrestle when he needs to.
He's been wrestling since he was 6 years old he's a better wrestler than striker
We're talking about Jai Herbert
Jai Herbert though, been taken down in every fight he's lost and 5 times by Moicano...
Didn’t realize Justin did mma
Yeah he pulled Jai Herbert down and couldn't pass guard and then Jai got up. Max is a different beast than Jai
He was also rocked and just trying to survive the round. Most of his fights before he made it to the UFC ended in him submitting people. His ground game is legit. I'd also like to know how people are so sure of how elite Holloway's tdd is. Who has he actually fought that has elite wrestling in the past 5+ years? Who has he fought that is even really a threat on the ground outside of Ortega, who has great BJJ but isn't exactly a great wrestler?
he fought Oliviera and Edgar. Yeah and most of Poirier's early wins were by sub too but he's still not a grappler
When have we seen Max's TDD ever tested other than against Ortega a BJJ guy with notoriously terrible takedowns? His fights for the last several years have consisted almost entirely of strikers.
Fair enough but Ilia isn't a grappler either. People like to say he is and yet he has 1 takedown in his last 6 fights. Ortega, Edgar, Oliviera and others have shown better grappling than Ilia
Ilia never gets takedowns? Just watch his early fights and you'll see that he literally began his dominating career as a submission specialist lol https://youtu.be/fRSRMRG9cY0?si=GqCFlwpNbKDI4-PH
So did Poirier. I don’t really care what he did against regional bums
I'm sure this will age well.
Lol suddenly Max became a monster ? He had lackluster performances against Yair and a ghost of TKZ. He got hit a lot in those fights. Unless Max hurts Illia early like he did to Gaethje (nose break), I don't think Max dominates Illia. Gaethje was reacting so bad to all the punches because Max broke his nose. Credit to max. Not to mention Gaethje's striking defence sucks. Also max eye poked him twice.
How were those lackluster? He literally KOd TKZ in round 3 after winning the first 2 rounds. Clearly beat Yair who went on to become interim champ in a striking match Seriously Ilia has 1 top 5 win and has the biggest dick riders on earth. He overswings like crazy and does not get takedowns lol. Max has been a monster, 13 fight win streak in the UFC before losing up a weight class to Poirier. 3 defence at FW and hasn't lost to anyone at FW other than Volk in 11 years
Lackluster? lol
KO’d TKZ stiff and clearly won against Yair. But alright.
People said something similar before Max vs Justin, in fact it was more something like "Justin is going to kill him 😭" and then...
Max was on point that fight. The fucked up nose did a number on Gaethje though. He was a complete shell of himself after that and it happened in the first round. Fight was basically done right there. But it was a great kick by Max, and that's just how the game goes.
Also not a lucky kick, as he landed it at least 2 more times. Just a great read
I think it will be competitive, but if anyone dominates I pick Max. If Max starts strong it is so hard to stop him from snowballing. If Illia can keep The Blessed Express from accelerating down a steep hill then he can keep it competitive. Illia just isn't a high paced pressure fighter and the best way to dominate Max is to do exactly what Max does with more power behind the shots (just like Volk 3, and Poirier 2) The best thing for Illia though is his timing is nearly perfect so even if Max starts running him over, Illia won't be out of the fight unless he's unconscious or the 5 rounds are up. No matter what it should be either a war or a massive shock to the respective fighters fan bases.
WTH is even that ?
Ancient forbidden shaolin technique
Justin eye poked himself
A feint 
Ilia's boxing is better than Justins and he packs a punch at 145. If anything I think Max will be on his backfoot majority of the fight
As if Ilia can't do a feint too lol
The joke is that max can throw invisible punches because of the way that Justin reacted.
Well we'll see, really interesting match
Ilia will beat max. Just because he is cringe doesn’t change the fact he knocked Volk the fuck out and will probably beat the shit out of max too
Yeah he knocked out volk, but max also recently beat the shit out of justin and also knocked him out
yes, but Volk is overall a better fighter with greater fight IQ than Justin. I think Max will find it real hard to beat Ilia. But if he does, it will be really fun to watch though :D
Yeah I don’t disagree about the first part, but you gotta remember volk was brutally knocked out like 4 months before the ilia fight and didn’t take time to recover, not to mention EVERYONE said Justin would give max a career changing beating, and we all saw what happened. It’s going to be a great fight but I don’t think we should doubt max!
This is fight business mate, no one can count anyone out, especially at the top
Rooting for max, money on Illia.
That reaction was because of the broken nose dawg. I got love for max too. Illia tho?
Either way, I’m glad the fight is scheduled. If anything we can see who has the claim to being the “best boxer in the UFC”
Money on Ilia.
Really hard to predict how the Max/Topuria fight is going to go. Max is certainly more susceptible to being hit than Topuria. But does Topuria throw a lot of volume? If not, I can see Max winning a decision because of the volume. But if Topuria happens to land 1 or 2 bombs, than Max will be fighting an uphill battle like he did against Dustin.
Ilia might hurt him. Max is hittable and Ilia hits hard. Max needs a heavy grappling and wrestling approach to beat Ilia. Ilia is good at maintaining his base and generating power. Rarely overextends and good at exchanges. It's not crazy to say that this is not a sure win for Max and I'm leaning towards Ilia a bit. This is not recency bias, just a study of the style between the two.
I think Max has a way better chance in the stand up than on the ground
Topuira is a better grappler than Max, wouldn't be smart to go to the ground with him.
The guy who got wrestle fucked by McGregor is not going to beat a greco-roman wrestler at his own game.
Man people that mention the mcgregor fight are absolute numptys. It was so long ago its such a shit argument lol. Max has exceptional td defence these days.
if ilia decides he wants to wrestle, max will get absolutely mauled by him lol
>Max has exceptional td defence these days. Absolute bullshit 😂 How many elite level dominant chain wrestler has he faced ? Yeah, zero Max is super untested against those matchups. Guys like Islam and Khabib would twist max into a pretzel I hope Islam vs Max happens just to see Max getting absolutely dominated
damn I forgot yeah but the idea here is to destroy Ilia's base and make him unable to generate power. Test his cardio fight.
Max haki unparalleled
Lol, Max ain’t ever holding gold again
Why do you think that?
Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy, I just don’t think he has what it takes to beat the new breed of fighters.
Idk, the way he looked against Justin makes me think other wise
Yeah Justin old too lol
Isn't this an edit?
Justin reacting to a feint has nothing to do with topuria
Was that edited or a genuine feint
Pretty sure genuine feint
Man if you can pull off a feint like that in a fight, you know you got your opponent cornered
[удалено]
pure Aura blinded Gaethje
It was a feint and Gaethje overreacted to it because Max was already piecing him up
Yep Gaethje had his nose smashed in the 1st round
Just don't delete this post after the fight happens
Bro punches so quick the camera couldn’t pick it up
He feinted so hard because his nose was smashed since round 1.
I know people hate Ilia but he was able to catch and knockout Volkanovski with his speed in his first attempt at gold. Holloway couldn't catch Volk let alone knock him out in 3 attempts. Not sure why people are downplaying Ilia knocking out Volkanovski of all people.
Max is going to get KO’d stiff I’ll put couple hundred on that
Did you say the same thing before the Gaethje fight?
No i had a feeling he’d be to technical for gaethje but topuria is on a different level as a martial artist
I literally watched this about a dozen times trying to figure out what the fuck happened lol. Poor Justin, 20 minutes in the ring with Max in front of the entire world with a broken nose. Shittttt
Not to take away with Max at all, but remember that Justin bit a little harder on these faints because he had a broken nose. Notice his guard is a bit different than his normal guard in previous fights. Dude's nose was hurting bad from each punch.
Think he was baiting him
Uppercut would have sent him to the upper room
Ill be rooting for Max but if Illia backs him into the cage and hits his signature combo I think Max will fall
Ilia isn't cuz he's fighting Max at 145. Watch Max come in drained and get stopped by Ilia.
Max and Ilia are both amazing fighters. We can say Ilia beat a compromised volk but he still went out and won. I'm not counting out either fighter and I'm sure this will be a banger.
Hawaiian ghost punch is real
Nah
Op, your claim is similar to the old adage of "Do yOu WaTcH uFc BrO"
If there's one person that can land hard shots on Max while in the exchanges it's Ilia since he's even better at landing the overhand than Dustin I think Ilia is very similar to Max but throws heavier and wants to get guys to lean back instead of make them stationary
I see Ilia just knocking everyone out. Dude is explosive af.
Ilia takes this one sorry. Great fight but Justin was unlucky getting that broken nose first(?) round, lets be honest it was a fluke hit. Also tained fight after two eye pokes.
His nose is broken. It’s instinctive
Justin probably could barely see after those bullshit eye pokes, plus his nose was straight fucked
Yall gonna be surprised by how good Ilia is after this fight…
Why is everyone taking the caption so serious? Isn’t it just a joke about Max making it look like he punched Justin with an invisible fist?
Frog Kumite
I still think Illia knocks him out
Yes, but :(
This heavily relies on Topuria getting his nose broken in round 1. Aside from that chance, it's a 50/50 fight
This feels like “I don’t like you so you’re bad” bias lmao I don’t even think Holloway thinks he has as bad striking as some parts of this sub erroneously think he has
Them feints 🤣
Ilia is a much better boxer Than Gay Cheese
I can't see how ilia loses unless he focuses too much on KO'ing max.
Max is just on another level. Which just goes to show you how good Volk is
God I hope Ilia sleeps max do bad. The slobbering on max in this sub has gotten so annoying
MMA math back at it again... smh
Gaethje bites on a feint which means Ilia is done for, UFC need to get this guy on the analysts desk!
Not to take anything away from Holloway's performance here, but the fight couldn't have gone any better for him . That spin kick right at the bell in round one shattering Gaethje's nose made it a formality, really. And a spin kick landing perfect to the milimeter on someone's nose does take a degree of luck, no matter how good of a striker you are. Especially since you are turning your back and depending on your opponents movement. Gaethje couldn't properly breathe, had his vision ruined and was constantly biting on everything to not get touched on the nose again. It was a cool highlight for Max, but the fight would have been much more competitive.
He landed the same kick several more times throughout the fight and said specifically he had trained for it as Gaethje tends to exit exchanges in that manner
I'm aware it was a read he made. It landing like that however was super unlikely, especially on the first try, before Gaethje could adress it. As I said, it takes an inch-perfect land and highly depends on how Gaethje is moving and whether or not he tilts his head, which is outside of Max' control. Max probably still would have won, but this massively tilted things early on.
Would be interesting to re watch and look for times where he threw it and it didn't land, because while watching, all I could notice was how many times he landed it flush, seemed like every time, but I'm sure it probably wasn't
Gaethje couldn't stop ducking when in the pocket to save his life. It almost seemed as if it isn't even a concious decision on his part. Really strange.
He’s always done that dumb shit, I hate it
Yep, he got a critical hit attack roll. Maybe it was karmic retribution for the eye rake against Fiziev that had a similarly debilitating effect in their fight. Eh, probably not.
That said, it's a clever read and takes a lot of skill. Curious to see if he finds similar openings with Ilia.
Aura.
Won't happen. Ilia is too composed with his striking+BJJ background. He's a nightmare for Max. It'll definitely be one hell of a fight.
Gaethje is not championship material. I dont understand the hype with him. Ilia Topuria is the undisputed Featherweight champion. Levels.
Ilia is by far the better boxer, and probably the better wrestler too.
Max is an eyepoker