UFC tried to lowball Ilia Topuria during last-minute White House negotiations

We still don’t know half of what went on with how UFC’s White House card was booked, but the half we do know now is pretty wild.

In fact, White & Co. even discussed Topuria versus Islam Makhachev (those details here). That didn’t happen because of a Makhachev hand injury.

According to Topuria’s manager, Malki Kawa, UFC got in touch four days before the announcement to probe the situation and then disappeared after he let them know how much it would cost to get “El Matador” in the cage.

“Wednesday I got asked, ‘Would you guys want to do this or that?’” Kawa told MMA Fighting. “And we said, ‘Absolutely.’ They gave us a number. We said, ‘Absolutely not.’ And then we didn’t hear anything after that. So, to me, there was no fight going on as of Wednesday afternoon. They couldn’t get there and it fell apart, so then they moved on to other stuff.

”Now, one thing I will say though is, I do believe when I got that call on Wednesday, they were talking to everybody,” he added. “That’s why when [Dana] says these guys weren’t supposed to be on the card, I believe that. Because even the way it was said to me, ‘Who do you want to fight? You guys can fight this guy, you guys can fight that guy,’ the money that was offered was small in comparison to what we had already said we wanted to fight those guys from before.

“Whether it was White House card, International Fight Week or it’s next week, it doesn’t matter,” Kawa continued. “It was more about getting the numbers. And when the numbers came, it was more like, ‘If this fight could happen, here’s the numbers that you guys down for.’ And we’re like, ‘Not at those numbers.’ So there was no fight.”

Things clearly worked out for Topuria, though. Not only is he on the card, he’s in the main event spot above the Alex Pereira vs. Ciryl Gane interim Heavyweight title fight, despite being a lighter weight class champion. That’s not how things normally work in UFC, pointing toward Topuria getting his way in negotiations.

While Topuria’s manager didn’t divulge too many details, he did imply UFC’s rushed negotiations and need to announce the fights at UFC 326 was to his client’s advantage.

“If you don’t have a deal in place, and then you’re talking about you’re going to announce something Saturday and the announcement is related to our negotiation?” he said. “Absolutely, I think we the advantage was ours.”