UFC analyst: Best thing for Ilia Topuria is to fight ASAP after Freedom 250 loss

Anthony Smith believes Ilia Topuria should try to quickly get rid of the sour taste in his mouth after UFC Freedom 250.

Topuria (17-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC) was upset by Justin Gaethje (28-5 MMA, 11-5 UFC) in a lightweight title loss Sunday at the White House in Washington DC. His face was marked up like never before as he suffered damage to both of his eyes in a Round 4 doctor’s stoppage TKO.

Smith said if there are no broken orbital bones, Topuria needs to erase that loss as soon as possible.

“He definitely took big damage, but I definitely didn’t feel like he was wobbled a bunch,” Smith said on “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “I really feel like the damage at the end was that knee to the body. I mean, facial cuts and lacerations, they look terrible. I bet he heals quickly. I bet in a week, he’s going to look almost new. So, I’d like to see him at the end of the year, though you don’t want to sit on that too long because it’ll f*ck with you.

“It’ll mess with how you feel about yourself, especially when you’re at the level of superstar that he is and the attention that he has, and he’s going to be eating that one for a while – especially with the sht that he says. I mean, he had a celebratory dinner before and had a funeral for Gaethje. You’re going to have to eat that sht for a minute. So, the quicker you can get back and be healthy and 100 percent and try to get that monkey off your back, the better.”

Topuria suffered his first-career loss after a dominant run to become UFC dual-champion, which saw him knock out Alexander Volkanovski, Max Holloway, and Charles Oliveira consecutively.