Ilia Topuria

There have been big fights before. Historic venues, loaded undercards, moments that briefly transcended the sport. But on June 14th in Washington D.C., something genuinely unprecedented is about to take place.

For the first time in history, the UFC is going to the White House, and at the centre of it all, defending his lightweight title against Justin Gaethje in the main event of UFC 250, stands Ilia Topuria.

Undefeated in 17 professional fights. A two-time world champion. And, by his own calm estimation, exactly where he always knew he would be.

“I’m going to fight in the biggest event in sports history,” he says, with characteristic understatement. “I feel very grateful and proud about that. I’m very excited.”

The excitement, when Topuria expresses it, never tips into frenzy. He has been rehearsing moments like this in his mind long before anyone else could see them coming, visualising the outcome, mapping the path, believing before any evidence existed to justify it.

“There are many people, a group of people, who need to see to believe,” he says. “I belong to a different type of group. I believe it first, and then I see it. Whatever I want in my life, I close my eyes, I start visualising, I believe that I have it, and I just create a plan for how to achieve it.

“Everything is possible, and I’m proof of that.”

To understand what Topuria is bringing to the White House, it helps to understand where he came from. His path to the top was never straightforward. He moved countries, faced real adversity and spent years navigating circumstances most people never have to.

By the time he settled in Spain as a teenager, he had already learned more about resilience than most fighters ever will.

“Everything that happened in my life happened for a reason,” he says. “Spain gave me so many great things and it allowed me to discover things about myself, about my personality. Of course, it was a very important step in my life.”

It was in Spain that he first encountered MMA, and the effect was immediate. Not a gradual realisation. Not a slow-burning ambition. Something switched on and never switched off.

“Since the first day, I don’t know what happened inside myself, but I always wanted to be the best,” he says. “If someone can do it, I can do it too. And if no one has done it, I can be the first one to do it.”

He has spent the years since making good on that. Now, on the lawn of the most powerful building in the world, he makes his 18th professional appearance, every one of them a victory, against one of the most dangerous challengers his division has ever produced.

Justin Gaethje arrives at UFC 250 as a former interim champion and one of the most decorated fighters in lightweight history. He brings power, relentless pressure and a refusal to take a backward step that has ended the nights of some of the sport’s very best.

Where others have tried to outmanoeuvre Topuria, Gaethje will likely try to walk through him, setting up a main event that could turn on a single exchange or grind across five brutal rounds.

Topuria will not be drawn on predictions. He does not need to be. When asked how he sees the night playing out, his answer is simple: “It will go the way that I expect.”

What separates Topuria now from the fighter he once was isn’t talent. That was always there. It’s everything he’s learned about himself in the years between.

“I remember how scared I was in my first professional fights,” he admits. “I have learned how to manage the conversation that I have with myself when I’m backstage, when you have so many negative thoughts during that time. I have learned how to manage that and really be able to enjoy the whole process.”

He is more mature now, more experienced, and clear-eyed about what staying unbeaten actually means in this sport. Being at the top makes you the target. Carrying that without letting it change you is its own kind of discipline.

“You’ve got to have a great mentality, and you also have to be someone very skilful inside your profession,” he says. “There are a lot of people who are working really hard, who want to become the best fighters in the world, and you have that spot. So you are the target of everyone.”

The time away from competition ahead of this fight, he says, has only sharpened him. Rather than coast, he spent it learning more about himself away from the pressure of performance.

“All the time that I’m not in competition, I always try to develop my skills, not only the skills that I need inside the Octagon, but also outside the Octagon. I want to know myself a little bit better. This time gave me the opportunity to discover myself from a different perspective. I have learned many things about myself, and of course, it helps me to be a better version of myself inside the Octagon.”

Outside the cage, Topuria’s world is expanding at a pace that matches his ambitions. His partnership with Richard Mille, the first of its kind in professional MMA, speaks for itself. Few fighters command that kind of influence beyond the cage, and even fewer get to this level.

“When you are a professional athlete and you’re talking about brands, of course you want to be associated with the biggest ones, with the best ones,” he says. “There are very few brands that are bigger than Richard Mille. Having that recognition that they want to partner with you, it feels amazing. It means the world to me.”

Football runs equally deep. A lifelong Real Madrid supporter, he counts Sergio Ramos among his closest friends, and the former Madrid captain is expected to be ringside at the White House next month. It is a friendship that began with a phone call that still sounds slightly surreal in the telling.

“I remember when I was a kid, I was watching him play and he was my idol,” he says. “It was so crazy when he called me for the first time and told me, ‘Let’s hang out, let’s do some training together.’ He came to my house, we did the first training session, and we connected in a proper way. We became friends from that moment.”

Of everything that has shifted in Topuria’s life in recent years, fatherhood is the thing that changed the most. He speaks about his two children with a warmth that sits alongside the competitive edge rather than softening it, giving everything else a different kind of weight.

“Since you become a father, it’s like you start living life from a different perspective,” he says. “You feel the responsibility in a different way. It’s not anymore only about you. You want to make your kids proud of whatever you’re doing. It changed everything. It changed the way that I approach life.”

It is also, he makes clear, about something bigger than his own family. Every kid who stops him in the street, every young fan who tells him they love watching him fight, matters to him in a way that feels genuine rather than performed.

“I want to be the example that it doesn’t matter where you come from if you know where you’re going,” he says. “If you have discipline, if you have faith, you can move mountains. This is the kind of example that I want to leave.”

In a matter of weeks, Ilia Topuria walks into the White House to defend his UFC Lightweight title against Justin Gaethje, in a setting no fighter in history has stood in before. He will do it the way he has done everything in his life, having already seen it play out in his mind long before anyone else could.

By his own admission, he knows that no one can predict tomorrow. But on this, he has no doubt. This fight is going one way, and that is the way of Ilia Topuria.

Credits

Location: One Thousand Museum Miami arranged by One Sotheby’s International Realty & UK Sotheby’s International Realty

Wearing: MR. AB & ICON

Video by Oliver Hayes