Topuria suffers brutal loss to Gaethje and drops UFC belt

Ilia Topuria lost his undefeated record and the UFC title after a punishing defeat to Justin Gaethje, in a bout he had hoped to win while appearing before Donald Trump at a planned UFC event at the White House. Instead, Topuria was badly beaten, left the cage “almost unrecognizable,” and was forced to stop after his corner asked the fight be ended.

The Spanish-language coverage cited by the article described severe facial bleeding and swelling, saying the fight was “so brutal” and that Topuria had to withdraw after being “completely broken.” It called the loss the lowest point of his career so far. SER wrote that from the opening minutes, his management was terrible, that Gaethje outclassed him in every metric, and that he “humiliated” him.

The article also recalled Topuria’s confidence before the fight. The night before, he was filmed celebrating with friends at a restaurant and declared, “Tomorrow is not a win we need to get, it is a win that is already ours.” More than a month earlier, during a meeting with Trump at the White House, he had also boasted, “Why are you giving your friend (Gaethje) the hardest test?!”