Matt Brown argues Ilia Topuria suffered ‘potential life-changing’ loss at UFC White House: ‘He may not come back the same’

Ilia Topuria exuded so much confidence heading into his title fight against Justin Gaethje in the UFC White House main event that he predicted a finish inside the first two minutes of the opening round and he had already changed his bio on Instagram to read 18-0 before throwing a single punch.

But that prediction came back to bite him on Sunday night after Topuria absorbed a world of damage with Gaethje punishing him with huge punches that busted up both of his eyes to the point where a doctor nearly called a halt to the action in the third round. Gaethje then delivered a rib-rattling knee to the body in the fourth round that had Topuria’s coaches so concerned for his long-term health that they made the decision to stop the fight.

After spending 15 years in the UFC, Matt Brown knows how a fighter’s mentality can make or break a career and he can’t help but wonder if Topuria getting battered and finished might actually change him forever.

“I could tell you right now that is a potential life-changing fight right there,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “He may not come back the same. I’m not talking just about the brain damage but the mental damage and the confidence, which has always been a huge thing for Ilia.

“He’s so confident and feels so good about everything. I think everybody handles everything differently but that is the exact type of fight that could completely change a person for the rest of their life. Only Justin Gaethje could do that. He’s a f*cking dog. You’ve got to love it.”

Topuria became a superstar in large part thanks to the way he just faced down his opposition and didn’t flinch when making bold predictions about his fights. He promised to dethrone Alexander Volkanovski at featherweight and that’s exactly what Topuria did.

Topuria said he would become the first person to knock out Max Holloway and he followed through on that. He predicted a dominant finish over Charles Oliveira to become a two-division champion and Topuria looked better than ever executing that plan.

But Gaethje took Topuria to deep waters in their fight and ultimately drowned him with relentless pressure, pace, and punishment. Topuria truly looked defeated before the fight was stopped and he was rushed to a nearby hospital for medical care.

“His own mental aura of invincibility [could have been shattered],” Brown said. “He now knows that there is a limit to his own abilities. He knows that he can be stopped or that he can be put to the point where he has to quit on the stool. He may not even think about it consciously. He may be able to brainwash that out of himself but subconsciously somewhere deep in his heart of hearts, he knows. His soul knows. There is an end point here. You’re not going to fight to the death, like we all like to say we do. That’s not actually who you are inside.

“That’s not a knock on Ilia Topuria either. The fact that he went as far as he did in that fight is pretty f*cking impressive. But we all have a breaking point. Say what the f*ck you want about it, we all have a f*cking breaking point. You can talk about how you’ll fight to the death all you want. There’s very few people — and when I say very view, I mean one out of a billion at best, that actually have that in them.”

Topuria’s dominant run and undefeated record put him in rarified air when it comes to the history books in the UFC, but that hit a snag on Sunday night.

That doesn’t mean Topuria can’t bounce back better than ever, but Brown says the way Topuria lost will be a concern as he rests, recovers, and contemplates what’s next.

“His soul now knows he has a breaking point,” Brown said. “That could raise some questions. This is what people that don’t fight don’t understand —it’s the ultimate lie detector test. It’s the ultimate truth teller when you’re in there. Because your subconscious takes over. All those things that you’ve told yourself, that you hear, your subconscious and your soul and your spirit has an entirely different narrative that you’ve got to prove to it. When you’re in those split seconds, things start changing.

“This is a lot of times when you see the champions like an Anderson Silva where you lose that first one, you can sit there and tell yourself all day that you are who you think you are but somewhere deep inside, you know that you’re not.”

So what should Topuria actually do when he’s ready to compete again?

Brown would like to see the former featherweight champion return to his old stomping grounds where he won’t give up as much size and power as he is at lightweight.

“If I’m Ilia and I’m in his camp, you go back down [to featherweight],” Brown said. “He was clearly undersized and Justin’s not some gigantic lightweight. Ilia needs to be fighting guys his size.

“Some of those shots he hit Justin Gaethje with would have knocked out probably every f*cking [145-pounder] on the planet. But Justin just hanging in there like the man that he is. If I’m ilia, I go back.”