Ilia Topuria and Arman Tsarukyan have been discussed by many as the next UFC lightweight title fight. But with the former saying he would vacate his belt if the promotion tried to book a fight with him versus the latter, many have been criticizing the reigning 155 pound titleholder but a prominent MMA analyst is not one of those critics.

Chael Sonnen intimated that this would be the next contest for both of these fighters anyway and it just hasn’t been officially announced. But ‘The American Gangster’ chose to focus on some claiming that Topuria not wanting to fight Tsarukyan is indicative of Topuria lacking temerity. When expounding upon his thoughts regarding the name calling aspects of how some are discussing Topuria within this recent Tsarukyan situation, Sonnen said,

“To call Ilia a coward, I mean this is such strong language, and I do feel like people have forgot what happened in the last three months.”

“Ilia Topuria did not move up to 155 to fight for a vacant title. That is your mind playing a trick on you. He did not move up to 155 to fight Charles Oliveira for a championship. That is your mind misremembering. Ilia Topuria dropped the belt and moved to 155 coming straight after Islam Makhachev.

“For fellow 155 pounders to be sitting back and to be judging and to be pointing a finger at Ilia Topuria. Ilia is playing you. Ilia is going to fight [Arman] Tsarukyan and outside of an illness or an injury, he is going to fight Tsarukyan next.”

Ilia Topuria gets criticized by a former champion, fans sound off

Ilia Topuria has an ally in Chael Sonnen within this specific context but a former opponent of Sonnen’s was not on the same page in terms of the critiques toward the UFC lightweight champion. This came from Michael Bisping during the Believe You Me Podcast with Paul Felder as both individuals expressed not being keen on how Topuria is going about handling this Arman Tsarukyan situation.

After Felder was lamenting about fighters in this generation achieving champion status and then wanting to jump around weight categories as opposed to fighting the number one contender in the division they helm over. Bisping agreed with this sentiment from Felder but it opened things up for fan criticism online once the clip of them discussing this subject began circulating.

Some fans highlighted Bisping’s run with the UFC middleweight crown, after claiming it from Luke Rockhold, which saw him defend against Dan Henderson and Georges St. Pierre with neither being the top 185 pound contender at the time. All the while, interim champion Robert Whittaker never received his title unification opportunity and was instead upgraded to undisputed champ following GSP capturing the belt from Bisping and then retiring from mixed martial arts.