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ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Undefeated Ilya Topuria stopped Alexander Volkanovski in the second round to claim the featherweight title at UFC 298 on Saturday night, ending the Australian champion’s four-year reign.
Topuria (15-0), a Georgian who lives and trains in Spain, controlled the first round of his first UFC title fight with sharp striking before he sensationally finished Volkanovski.
Topuria hammered the 35-year-old Volkanovski into the cage with a left-right combination before dropping him to the canvas with a right right hand followed by a big left hand. Topuria finished the stunned champion with 1:28 remaining to improve to 7-0 on the ground since joining the UFC in late 2020.
“I feel very happy right now,” Topuria said. “They told me I couldn’t do it. …Just believe in yourself, and anything is possible. Just look at me now.”
Former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker earned a unanimous decision victory over Paulo Costa in the final bout of the UFC’s first pay-per-view show in Southern California in more than two years.
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Volkanovski (26-4) had made five consecutive successful title defenses since winning his belt in late 2019, but his reign ended with his first featherweight loss in UFC competition. Volkanovski also lost twice to lightweight champion Islam Makhachev in an unsuccessful bid to become a two-division champion last year, and he did not show his usual tireless work rate against Topuria before the fight ended abruptly.
Topuria perfectly seized a moment many years in the making. He rocketed to the top of the list of contenders for the Volkanovski belt with six consecutive UFC wins in less than three years, capped by an emphatic decision over Josh Emmett last summer.
Topuria was not lacking in confidence during the promotion for this fight. He repeatedly talked about Volkanovski’s reign in the past tense, and he even took the title belt off the table in front of Volkanovski at his press conference on Thursday.
Volkanovski came to that event dressed like an old man, defying the notion that he was too old to compete with the 27-year-old Topuria.
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg hung out with Volkanovski and wore the champion’s cornerman’s gear in his front row seat at the sold-out Honda Center.
Whittaker (25-7) followed up his win over Costa (14-3) last summer after a loss to future middleweight champion Dricas de Plessis, who staggered Whittaker with a spectacular spinning head kick in the final seconds of the first round.
Whittaker’s face was left bloodied, but he largely controlled the next two rounds against Costa, whose conditioning deficiencies may have limited his ability to deliver any significant amount of strikes.
Earlier, former two-division UFC champion Henry Cejudo went 0-2 with a unanimous decision loss to Merab Dvalishvili in his comeback bid. Cejudo had previously said that he would retire again if he lost the fight.
Cejudo, a former US Olympic wrestling gold medalist and UFC champion at flyweight and bantamweight, retired in 2020 at the height of his MMA reign. Now aged 37, he began his comeback with a loss to Aljamain Sterling last May.
Cejudo was taken across the cage at one point against Dvalishvili, a Georgian who trains on Long Island. Dvalishvili won his 10th consecutive fight overall and ninth at bantamweight.
Chinese light heavyweight Zhang Mingyang had one of the most impressive finishes on the undercard, knocking out Brandon Ribeiro with a dynamite combination in the first round of his UFC debut.
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