{"id":104194,"date":"2026-01-18T10:25:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T14:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/sin-categoria\/topuria-confirms-ufc-title-defense-return-between-april-and-june\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T10:25:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T14:25:01","slug":"topuria-confirms-ufc-title-defense-return-between-april-and-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/mma\/topuria-confirms-ufc-title-defense-return-between-april-and-june\/","title":{"rendered":"Topuria Confirms UFC Title Defense: Return Between April and June"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Ilia Topuria Plans UFC Lightweight Title Defense<\/h2>\n\nIlia Topuria, the current UFC lightweight champion, has announced his plans to defend his title in the next six months. The news was communicated by Topuria himself through his social media.\n\nTopuria, with an undefeated record of 17-0, had temporarily stepped away from the sport at the end of last year due to personal matters. Subsequently, the fighter revealed that he was dealing with &#8220;false accusations of domestic abuse&#8221; and recently appeared in a family court in Spain related to a custody matter with his ex-wife, Giorgina Uzcategui.\n\nDuring Topuria&#8217;s absence, the UFC scheduled an interim title fight between Justin Gaethje and Paddy Pimblett, which will headline the UFC 324 event in Las Vegas.\n\nOn Friday, Topuria posted on X that his return to the octagon will take place between April and June.\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>April-June. The winner between Paddy and Justin.<\/p><cite>Ilia Topuria<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\nTopuria, 28 years old, became a two-division champion in the UFC last June, after knocking out former champion Charles Oliveira at UFC 317. He has expressed interest in moving up to welterweight to face former lightweight champion Islam Makhachev, but will likely need to defend his title at least once before.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ilia Topuria Plans UFC Lightweight Title Defense Ilia Topuria, the current UFC lightweight champion, has announced his plans to defend his title in the next six months. The news was communicated by Topuria himself through his social media. Topuria, with an undefeated record of 17-0, had temporarily stepped away from the sport at the end [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2095,2096,395,228],"class_list":{"0":"post-104194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ilia-topuria","9":"tag-lightweight","10":"tag-title","11":"tag-ufc"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}