February 20, 2025 • 11 mins
Daniel Cormier IS BACK to address the breaking news Dana White delivered Wednesday, stating Ilia Topuria is vacating his championship belt to move up to the lightweight division and Diego Lopes will fight Alexander Volkanovski for the vacant belt. Plus, with Topuria now in Islam Makhachev's division, DC talks about that future fight and why he expect that matchup to go down AFTER taking on Charles Oliveira! And don't miss Cormier's takes on Dana's other major announcements: Valentina Shevchenko taking on Manon Fiorot, Belal Muhammad fighting Jack Della Maddalena, and Shavkat Rakhmonov turning down the title fight! And DC gives his thoughts on Dana White's viral Instagram live on UFC 314 Wednesday night and shows fans exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage at UFC's The Ultimate Fighter show taping. #Volume #Herd
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey, guys, what's up is DC? Look?
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I know that you want the best for your family,
and I do too. America is fighting against dangerous chemicals
in our foods, and Backyard Butchers is a top healthy
pick for twenty twenty five. So see why six hundred
thousand Americans trust the Backyard Butchers. Guys, I am talking straight,
(00:28):
US born and raised beef right out of those green
pastures in Texas. Their faith based American first founders. They
work directly with local ranchers to bring you wholesome meats
for you and your entire family. No overseas mystery meat,
no hormones, no preservatives, just pure, top quality beef the
(00:51):
way it should be. So whether you choose the popular
backyard box or a customer favorite steakhouse reserve box, hey, you'll.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Be eating right. And here's the best part.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
If you subscribe today, they'll make sure you get your
choice of two ten ounce ribbis or two pounds of
waggle ground.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Beef and it's absolutely free.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Plus use my promo col DCTV at Backyard Butchers dot
Com for thirty percent off the subscription. You know, I'm
always trying to look y'all up but thirty percent. I'm
really in my bag. That's Backyard Butchers dot Com, slash
DCTV hit that promo, cold guys, thirty percent off of
some of the best meat you ever gonna taste, the
real deal.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
All right, guys, I'm at the Ultimate Fighter. We're about
ready to pick fights for next week's fights. But before
I cannot not talk about all the news that broke
last night. Dana White announced fight after fight after fight
last night, one being that Diego Lopez is not fighting
against Alexander Volkanowski for the featherweight Championship of the World,
(02:04):
not the interim full featherweight title, because the champ, Iliot
to Pooria, is moving up to one hundred and fifty
five pounds full time.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Guys. This is massive news, massive news in.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
The world to make marstars because very rarely do you
get a champion that walks away from his weight class
and says, I'm done with it. I don't want to
have an interim title. I just want to give the
belt up. I'm gonna go out full time. I'm moving,
I'm moving. John Jones did it.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
George S. Pierre did it. Now. Iliot Tapooria is doing it.
Here's the difference. Those guys all had guaranteed title fights
as they went up in weight class. Ilia does not
have that.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
What Illly is saying, or at least according to the boss,
is that he can't make the weight anymore and that
his legacy has been defined already. Look, man, Eliot to
Poria has become the champion and only defends the belt
one time.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Generally, when someone says my legacy is.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Defined after one title defense, we would laugh at him.
But how do you laugh at the Pooria When he
beat Alexander Volkanowski to become the world champion by knockout,
then he beats Max Holloway to defend and keep that
world championship by knockout.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So his process is a little bit shortened.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Because we are all in agreement that there are three
guys in consideration as the greatest featherweight of all time.
He beat two in one calendar year, and that is
why I believe he should have been the Fighter of
the Year last year. Those two wins were insane in
terms of twelve months.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But he's moving up.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Lopez is fighting Vok. To me, that's the biggest news.
There's a lot of news that won seventy, but the
implications that won forty five and that won fifty five
are massive now because we didn't hear that the Pooria
has a title fight. He has been calling out Islam Mahachev.
He has been saying he's the guy to beat him.
He is saying that he's the one that can go
(04:00):
up there and beat the guy that has proven to
this point unbeatable outside of Adriana Martinz.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Catch him with a punch that knocked him out.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
How do you move up? You know what's crazy is
that when you're Ilia and you have a star quality
about you, you seem like you can sell out a
seventy five thousand seeds Santiago Bernabeo in Madrid. You have
the option to say, hey, I'm going to make these
(04:30):
guys fight for the interim title. The UFC would not
have forced him to vacate. He made that decision on
his own. But it is kind of par for the course.
When you think about Iliot to poor you, he really
does carry himself like a politician, right, well dressed, well spoken,
very respectful of mixed martial arts. He seems to do
all the right things, and in this instance most would
(04:53):
believe that he's doing the right thing because he's not
gonna hold up the entire division. But for me, I
gotta be honest, I would have been a little selfish
inn say situations because what if he loses, what if
he does earn a title fight?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And what if he loses? Now he's not even the
fedaweight champion anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Should have held on to the belt, waited, Lopez and
Volkanowski would have gladly fought for an interim championship.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You go out there with nothing to lose, you play
with houses money.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
We saw so many guys do that before, and I
don't know that they had the same type of leverage
that illiot to Pouria has right now because he seems
to be one of those guys that is on the
verge of becoming a champion.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So what's next for Tapouria?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I believe, and I'm not talking from any knowledge. I
believe it's Charles Olivera. And let me tell you why
you match up to Pourian Olivera. They fight relatively soon
Islam Is in Ramadan. They don't want to fight in Ramadan.
(05:56):
He doesn't want to train in Ramadan. Obviously, you guys
know Ramadan from the moment when the sun comes up,
when the sun sets. These guys can't eat, can't drink,
they can't take in anything, so training is almost impossible.
So that pushes Markachev back to the end of Ramadan. Right,
it would seem as though Marketchev will be ready to
(06:16):
fight by October in Abu Dhabi, and if he is,
you match ilia versus ola Vera early sometime in the spring.
You make them fight with the guarantee that one of
these guys gets a title fight, because right now it's Charles.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Charles is next.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
But when you introduce to Pouria into the equation, things
get a little bit convoluted and a little bit unsure.
It's not as defined as it might have been before.
Because Ilias looks so good and it's time at featherweight.
So I say you match these two dudes up. Guys
every May, we tend to struggle a little bit for
(07:00):
a main event.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Right two years A couple of years ago, you watched.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Amanda Newonaz fight against Irene Aldona in Canada. Last year
we had Sahudo and al Jamain Sterling in New Jersey.
In May, there's usually a pay per view that doesn't
have the biggest names. This is one of those fights
that you could do as a pay per view main
event that doesn't even need a title.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
If you do.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Tapouria versus Charles Olavera, everybody taps it.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Everybody taps it.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's an amazing fight, and I believe it would truly
bring some stability to what now is going to be
the lightweight division. Markachev doesn't seem to want to fight
him right now. His manager riz von Megamettov said he
needs to fight a real lightweight, put him against Charles.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I feel like that's Risbon going. Hey, I'm taking you
behind the curtain a little bit. I'm letting you know
what we're thinking and what we are hearing. It's clues,
It's all clues.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Hell Lopez gave us a clue a few weeks ago
that he was fighting the wrestler by being in the
Oklahoma State Wrestling Room. So he gave us a clue.
We gotta start paying attention. We gotta start paying attention
to what these guys and these gals are telling us
and showing us as they prepare themselves for these fights.
This is massive news, though, to pour you at one
(08:19):
fifty five full time is real, and it has the
potential to be a real problem for a lot of
lightweights in the UFC.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Put him with Charles Charles versus to Pouria.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
With the champion guaranteed title fight in Abu Dhabi against
the champ Islami Katchev now one for it leaves the
belt up for grabs. Volkanowski is the right guy to
be fighting for the belt, even though he's won and
three in his last four fights, and Diego Lopez is
an assassin. I don't know that I've ever seen anybody
beat Brian or take a worse outside of Max Holloway.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
He beat him bad. He beat him up the entirety
of that fight.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Maybe he didn't finish him, but he dominated Brian Ortega
and earned a chance as the title.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Here's where the issue becomes for me.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I don't know that Volkanowski had one in three in
his last four. Isn't supposed to elevate this kid because
if loses now, you've got a legitimate star in Diego Lopez,
because he just beat one of the three greatest featherweights
of all time.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
But if he.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Wins now, you don't really lose anything with a champion
leaving the weight because you still got a guy that
has been really tied to one hundred and forty five
in terms of Volkanowski. So it really feels like a
win win situation for the UFC. And it's in Miami,
right It's in Miami, beautiful town, beautiful fight city, and
some of the hottest crowds that we fight in front
(09:44):
of over the course of the UFC calendar.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So that works.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That works, But man, it really does kind of suck
because I was looking forward to Lopez versus Italy.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I was looking forward to Vloya versus Ily.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
There were so many young guys that we could have
watched him fight against over the course of his championship reign.
Balal Mohammet is fighting against Jack Dela Madelena. Jack Dela
Madelena has an entire country behind him. He is the
type of guy that if he can get a belt
on him, could become a true international superstar. The Boss
last night was having a good time on that line.
There were forty thousand people watching that Instagram live.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
That's a nuts.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
That is an insane number for a person to be
doing an Instagram live.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Dana didn't announce all those fights and I was like, oh,
oh hey, the Pitbull brothers are now in the UFC. Dude.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It was a massive night for news from the UFC.
We get some big, big title fights, but I'm the
most I'm excited. I'm excited about Italy at one fifty five,
but he's kind of small, honestly, it's kind of a
smaller guy. I want to see how big he gets,
as he has now made this move up to one
fifty five full time.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Remember Pourier was a forty five pounder. He went up.
He's huge now.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Holloway now has one forty five full time, and so
is Illiot to pour you massive news, big time fights
coming into the UFC, and I gotta get back to work.
The Ultimate Fighter doesn't stop. You want to take a
look around the gym. Let me show you guys. Hey,
you want to see the Ultimate Fighter Jim and how
this works.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
We got Bob and Jake working back here, we got Rosendo. Look,
this is the UFCPI, this is the Apex. We're getting
ready to pick fights.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Guys. Always behind the scenes, I give you what you want.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
What you see bere Wolf, What a beautiful camera you
got let's go guys, until next time, Like subscribe, tell
a friend to tell a friend that DC's got a
YouTube channel and that I'm doing stuff like this and
taking you behind the scenes at the UFC.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Until next time, Peace,
The volume.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hey, guys, what's up is DC? Look?
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I know that you want the best for your family,
and I do too. America is fighting against dangerous chemicals
in our foods, and Backyard Butchers is a top healthy
pick for twenty twenty five. So see why six hundred
thousand Americans trust the Backyard Butchers. Guys, I am talking straight,
(00:28):
US born and raised beef right out of those green
pastures in Texas. Their faith based American first founders. They
work directly with local ranchers to bring you wholesome meats
for you and your entire family. No overseas mystery meat,
no hormones, no preservatives, just pure, top quality beef the
(00:51):
way it should be. So whether you choose the popular
backyard box or a customer favorite steakhouse reserve box, hey, you'll.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Be eating right. And here's the best part.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
If you subscribe today, they'll make sure you get your
choice of two ten ounce ribbis or two pounds of
waggle ground.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Beef and it's absolutely free.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Plus use my promo col DCTV at Backyard Butchers dot
Com for thirty percent off the subscription. You know, I'm
always trying to look y'all up but thirty percent. I'm
really in my bag. That's Backyard Butchers dot Com, slash
DCTV hit that promo, cold guys, thirty percent off of
some of the best meat you ever gonna taste, the
real deal.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
All right, guys, I'm at the Ultimate Fighter. We're about
ready to pick fights for next week's fights. But before
I cannot not talk about all the news that broke
last night. Dana White announced fight after fight after fight
last night, one being that Diego Lopez is not fighting
against Alexander Volkanowski for the featherweight Championship of the World,
(02:04):
not the interim full featherweight title, because the champ, Iliot
to Pooria, is moving up to one hundred and fifty
five pounds full time.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Guys. This is massive news, massive news in.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
The world to make marstars because very rarely do you
get a champion that walks away from his weight class
and says, I'm done with it. I don't want to
have an interim title. I just want to give the
belt up. I'm gonna go out full time. I'm moving,
I'm moving. John Jones did it.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
George S. Pierre did it. Now. Iliot Tapooria is doing it.
Here's the difference. Those guys all had guaranteed title fights
as they went up in weight class. Ilia does not
have that.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
What Illly is saying, or at least according to the boss,
is that he can't make the weight anymore and that
his legacy has been defined already. Look, man, Eliot to
Poria has become the champion and only defends the belt
one time.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Generally, when someone says my legacy is.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Defined after one title defense, we would laugh at him.
But how do you laugh at the Pooria When he
beat Alexander Volkanowski to become the world champion by knockout,
then he beats Max Holloway to defend and keep that
world championship by knockout.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So his process is a little bit shortened.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Because we are all in agreement that there are three
guys in consideration as the greatest featherweight of all time.
He beat two in one calendar year, and that is
why I believe he should have been the Fighter of
the Year last year. Those two wins were insane in
terms of twelve months.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
But he's moving up.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Lopez is fighting Vok. To me, that's the biggest news.
There's a lot of news that won seventy, but the
implications that won forty five and that won fifty five
are massive now because we didn't hear that the Pooria
has a title fight. He has been calling out Islam Mahachev.
He has been saying he's the guy to beat him.
He is saying that he's the one that can go
(04:00):
up there and beat the guy that has proven to
this point unbeatable outside of Adriana Martinz.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Catch him with a punch that knocked him out.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
How do you move up? You know what's crazy is
that when you're Ilia and you have a star quality
about you, you seem like you can sell out a
seventy five thousand seeds Santiago Bernabeo in Madrid. You have
the option to say, hey, I'm going to make these
(04:30):
guys fight for the interim title. The UFC would not
have forced him to vacate. He made that decision on
his own. But it is kind of par for the course.
When you think about Iliot to poor you, he really
does carry himself like a politician, right, well dressed, well spoken,
very respectful of mixed martial arts. He seems to do
all the right things, and in this instance most would
(04:53):
believe that he's doing the right thing because he's not
gonna hold up the entire division. But for me, I
gotta be honest, I would have been a little selfish
inn say situations because what if he loses, what if
he does earn a title fight?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And what if he loses? Now he's not even the
fedaweight champion anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Should have held on to the belt, waited, Lopez and
Volkanowski would have gladly fought for an interim championship.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You go out there with nothing to lose, you play
with houses money.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
We saw so many guys do that before, and I
don't know that they had the same type of leverage
that illiot to Pouria has right now because he seems
to be one of those guys that is on the
verge of becoming a champion.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So what's next for Tapouria?
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I believe, and I'm not talking from any knowledge. I
believe it's Charles Olivera. And let me tell you why
you match up to Pourian Olivera. They fight relatively soon
Islam Is in Ramadan. They don't want to fight in Ramadan.
(05:56):
He doesn't want to train in Ramadan. Obviously, you guys
know Ramadan from the moment when the sun comes up,
when the sun sets. These guys can't eat, can't drink,
they can't take in anything, so training is almost impossible.
So that pushes Markachev back to the end of Ramadan. Right,
it would seem as though Marketchev will be ready to
(06:16):
fight by October in Abu Dhabi, and if he is,
you match ilia versus ola Vera early sometime in the spring.
You make them fight with the guarantee that one of
these guys gets a title fight, because right now it's Charles.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Charles is next.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
But when you introduce to Pouria into the equation, things
get a little bit convoluted and a little bit unsure.
It's not as defined as it might have been before.
Because Ilias looks so good and it's time at featherweight.
So I say you match these two dudes up. Guys
every May, we tend to struggle a little bit for
(07:00):
a main event.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Right two years A couple of years ago, you watched.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Amanda Newonaz fight against Irene Aldona in Canada. Last year
we had Sahudo and al Jamain Sterling in New Jersey.
In May, there's usually a pay per view that doesn't
have the biggest names. This is one of those fights
that you could do as a pay per view main
event that doesn't even need a title.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
If you do.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Tapouria versus Charles Olavera, everybody taps it.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Everybody taps it.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's an amazing fight, and I believe it would truly
bring some stability to what now is going to be
the lightweight division. Markachev doesn't seem to want to fight
him right now. His manager riz von Megamettov said he
needs to fight a real lightweight, put him against Charles.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I feel like that's Risbon going. Hey, I'm taking you
behind the curtain a little bit. I'm letting you know
what we're thinking and what we are hearing. It's clues,
It's all clues.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Hell Lopez gave us a clue a few weeks ago
that he was fighting the wrestler by being in the
Oklahoma State Wrestling Room. So he gave us a clue.
We gotta start paying attention. We gotta start paying attention
to what these guys and these gals are telling us
and showing us as they prepare themselves for these fights.
This is massive news, though, to pour you at one
(08:19):
fifty five full time is real, and it has the
potential to be a real problem for a lot of
lightweights in the UFC.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Put him with Charles Charles versus to Pouria.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
With the champion guaranteed title fight in Abu Dhabi against
the champ Islami Katchev now one for it leaves the
belt up for grabs. Volkanowski is the right guy to
be fighting for the belt, even though he's won and
three in his last four fights, and Diego Lopez is
an assassin. I don't know that I've ever seen anybody
beat Brian or take a worse outside of Max Holloway.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
He beat him bad. He beat him up the entirety
of that fight.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Maybe he didn't finish him, but he dominated Brian Ortega
and earned a chance as the title.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Here's where the issue becomes for me.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I don't know that Volkanowski had one in three in
his last four. Isn't supposed to elevate this kid because
if loses now, you've got a legitimate star in Diego Lopez,
because he just beat one of the three greatest featherweights
of all time.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
But if he.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Wins now, you don't really lose anything with a champion
leaving the weight because you still got a guy that
has been really tied to one hundred and forty five
in terms of Volkanowski. So it really feels like a
win win situation for the UFC. And it's in Miami,
right It's in Miami, beautiful town, beautiful fight city, and
some of the hottest crowds that we fight in front
(09:44):
of over the course of the UFC calendar.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So that works.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That works, But man, it really does kind of suck
because I was looking forward to Lopez versus Italy.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I was looking forward to Vloya versus Ily.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
There were so many young guys that we could have
watched him fight against over the course of his championship reign.
Balal Mohammet is fighting against Jack Dela Madelena. Jack Dela
Madelena has an entire country behind him. He is the
type of guy that if he can get a belt
on him, could become a true international superstar. The Boss
last night was having a good time on that line.
There were forty thousand people watching that Instagram live.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
That's a nuts.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
That is an insane number for a person to be
doing an Instagram live.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Dana didn't announce all those fights and I was like, oh,
oh hey, the Pitbull brothers are now in the UFC. Dude.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It was a massive night for news from the UFC.
We get some big, big title fights, but I'm the
most I'm excited. I'm excited about Italy at one fifty five,
but he's kind of small, honestly, it's kind of a
smaller guy. I want to see how big he gets,
as he has now made this move up to one
fifty five full time.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Remember Pourier was a forty five pounder. He went up.
He's huge now.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Holloway now has one forty five full time, and so
is Illiot to pour you massive news, big time fights
coming into the UFC, and I gotta get back to work.
The Ultimate Fighter doesn't stop. You want to take a
look around the gym. Let me show you guys. Hey,
you want to see the Ultimate Fighter Jim and how
this works.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Oh, here we go.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
We got Bob and Jake working back here, we got Rosendo. Look,
this is the UFCPI, this is the Apex. We're getting
ready to pick fights.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Guys. Always behind the scenes, I give you what you want.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
What you see bere Wolf, What a beautiful camera you
got let's go guys, until next time, Like subscribe, tell
a friend to tell a friend that DC's got a
YouTube channel and that I'm doing stuff like this and
taking you behind the scenes at the UFC.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Until next time, Peace,
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre