Daniel Cormier heavily disagrees with the odds Khabib Nurmagomedov gave for Ilia Topuria vs. Arman Tsarukyan.
Nurmagomedov said he’d give UFC lightweight champion Topuria (17-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) a 20 percent chance of beating Tsarukyan (23-3 MMA, 9-2 UFC).
But with Topuria’s recent dominance of three-straight knockouts over featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, BMF champ Max Holloway, and ex-lightweight champ Charles Oliveira at UFC 317, Cormier is very high on “El Matador.”
“All we’ve seen Ilia Topuria do is beat people up, and honestly, for as much better as Arman has gotten, Ilia’s gotten better, too,” Cormier said on his YouTube channel. “Now, I am by no means saying that Arman cannot fight Ilia Topuria, and he might be the best lightweight in the world. But Topuria has the belt now, and because of that, and the way he looked doing it, Ilia Topuria is the best lightweight in the world to me.”
Cormier agrees with Nurmagomedov’s assessment of how Tsarukyan’s wrestling and physicality could pose problems, but thinks his 80-20 percent odds in Tsarukyan’s favor are way off.
“80-20 percent is crazy though,” Cormier said. “80-20 percent is hard when anyone’s fighting. The only time 80-20 could be thought of in fights has been in the case of Khabib and Jon Jones. They’re the only people that have gone through this whole thing without losing. So you could have said, ‘Yeah, it’s probably 80 percent that guy is winning,’ because they never lose.
“But guess who else hasn’t lost? Ilia Topuria. So to put him on the opposite side of that 80-20 is crazy to me. I don’t believe that for one second. I really do disagree with Khabib on that one. There is not a guy in the world that I believe is going to beat Ilia Topuria eight out of 10 times.”
