Din Thomas thinks Ilia Topuria vs. Justin Gaethje would have been a better fight than Charles Oliveira at UFC 317.
With Islam Makhachev relinquishing his lightweight title, the promotion opted to pit Topuria (16-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) against Oliveira (35-10 MMA, 23-10 UFC) for the vacant belt in the June 28 headliner at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas (ESPN+ pay-per-view, ESPN, ESPN+).
According to UFC commentator Jon Anik, Gaethje (26-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC) was upset to be passed up on the title opportunity, and Thomas agrees.
“I think that would have excited me more, too,” Thomas said of Topuria vs. Gaethje on his “FightCourt” podcast. “I think the only other reason I could see them not giving it to Gaethje is maybe just the lasting impression of him getting knocked out by Max (Holloway) might have hurt his stock a little bit in terms of championship aspirations.
“It’s tough to say where Gaethje even goes from here. Do you put him against Arman (Tsarukyan)? I would much rather have seen him fight Ilia, honestly. I would much rather have seen that. Maybe he did get kind of passed up, and it was just based on our own perceptions and bias towards Charles, just almost accepting that he deserved to be in that spot and I didn’t even question it.”
Thomas thinks the idea of Oliveira in the title picture wasn’t even debated by the UFC.
“To me, it was almost automatic we just assumed and expected it to be Charles, and maybe the UFC did, too,” Thomas said. “Like they just saw it the way it was supposed to be. Charles probably just talked his way to being like, ‘Yo, I’m fighting for this title,’ so then automatically we just assumed that was the situation.”
