Topuria credits brother's corner stoppage with saving his MMA career after Gaethje defeat

Ilia Topuria says his brother’s decision to stop his UFC lightweight title fight against Justin Gaethje almost certainly preserved his MMA career, after revealing the full extent of the injuries he sustained during the June defeat.

Gaethje produced one of the year’s biggest upsets, battering Topuria to a corner stoppage in the fourth round of their main event at UFC White. The Georgian fighter, suffering his first professional loss, left the cage with two broken orbital bones, a broken nose, and a broken foot.

“I never really cried, I never was really sad,” Topuria told One on One MMA. “It happened. It is what it is. I’m not gonna torture myself because of what happened. It was sad; it was a shitty situation. Just imagine, in one of the most important moments of my life, I had four broken bones.”

Topuria described the surreal experience of competing in that condition, noting he was effectively fighting blind by the later rounds. “I was in front of the President of the United States, in front of millions and millions of people behind the cameras, and I was almost blind. I couldn’t breathe without a lot of pain,” he said.

Despite his instinct to continue, Topuria acknowledged that his brother — working his corner — made the right call. “Listen, in myself, me personally, I wouldn’t say, ‘Stop it,’ but I respect the decision that my brother took in that moment. I would do the same. Because I couldn’t see. I couldn’t open my eyes.”

He described the sensation in vivid terms: “I feel like I have thousands of crystals in my eye. I’ve done this for my entire life, but I never saw someone with two orbital bones broken, two bones broken, with his foot broken, in a fight.”

The consequences of continuing, Topuria believes, would have been permanent. “100 percent. If he wouldn’t have stopped the fight, probably I wouldn’t be able to fight again in my life,” he said, adding that he is grateful for his brother’s intervention.

Despite the defeat and the physical toll, Topuria struck a philosophical note about the experience. “You don’t always win,” he said. “Life continues. You can let yourself live with the experience of the past, or you just have to keep going. That’s life.”