Ilia Topuria will never forget the time he first met Conor McGregor, but for all the wrong reasons.
The pair came face-to-face during fight week ahead of UFC 264 in July 2021, a card headlined by McGregor’s trilogy bout against Dustin Poirier.
At the time, Topuria had just two fights in the UFC to his name and was set to face former Ultimate Fighter winner and grappling sensation Ryan Hall.
Put simply, the stages of Topuria and McGregor’s respective careers couldn’t have been more different going into their bouts that weekend in Las Vegas.
However, Topuria could sense from a mile away that McGregor was not a man he wanted to be associated with, no matter the superstar status he carried both in and outside of the octagon.
Speaking to Glamtera Visuals, Topuria claimed McGregor may be an ‘excellent person’ away from the prying eyes of the public but still gave off ‘super bad vibes’.
“Analysing people as human beings,” Topuria said, via English subtitles.
“Let’s look at Conor. A guy, his wife, his children, his family. I can’t give an opinion. I don’t know how these people are. He might be an excellent person and I perceived his energy in a different way from what it is.
“He simply came to work to put on a show, but the feeling I had when he was around was: Keep him away! Keep him away! Just a terrible energy.
“I swear, it felt like his aura came from hell. You know what I’m saying? I want to be away from this dude. He has black energy. I had never felt that before.”
It wasn’t just Topuria who got bad vibes from McGregor either.
According to Topuria, his coach Agustin Climent claimed: “This dude (McGregor) is losing bad.”
Climent’s prediction ultimately rang true, as McGregor lost to Poirier for the second time in less than seven months albeit in brutal circumstances.
The Irishman unfortunately rolled his ankle while stepping back but it resulted in a gruesome broken tibia, rendering him unable to continue fighting.
Poirier won the fight via TKO in round one as the ringside doctor called a stop to the contest.
It is also the last time McGregor stepped foot in the octagon, as his comeback fight against Michael Chandler in June was cancelled after the Irishman sustained a broken toe.
As for Topuria, he became the first man to stop Hall when he knocked the American out cold in the first round with some vicious ground and pound.
Since then, the Spaniard has torn through the featherweight division to become champion.
Topuria claimed the belt in February when he slept Alexander Volkanovski in just the second round, ending the Australian’s four-year reign as the king of the featherweights.
The 27-year-old enjoyed a successful first title defence at UFC 308 in October when he beat cult hero Max Holloway, as the Hawaiian was stopped for the first time in his 34-fight MMA career.
Although Topuria and McGregor have charted vastly different paths since UFC 264, the two have not been afraid to throw a verbal jab at one another in 2024.
Speaking at a Bare Knuckle FC press conference in July, McGregor claimed he would ‘slap the head off’ Topuria and ‘slap him back to Georgia’.
Topuria clapped back at the Irishman in the lead-up to his fight against Holloway, confidently stating McGregor was ‘not at all’ on his level.
“Otherwise, I’d gladly plant these knuckles in his brain to see if I could fix it and straighten his nose,” Topuria said.
Topuria added: “Conor’s problem is I’ll slap these nuts on his forehead, right here, and I’ll warm him up with this. Then I’ll throw him down and stomp on his head.”
The animosity between the two lead to rumours Topuria and McGregor would go head-to-head at some stage in 2025, but the UFC featherweight champ shot those down.
In a now-deleted tweet, Topuria said: “The rumors of bout with mchicken are false.”
As for what’s next for Topuria, he declared his intention to move up to the lightweight division earlier in December but won’t vacate his featherweight title.