Renato Moicano Wants Topuria Next: 'He Needs an Easy Fight'

Ilia Topuria still hasn't booked his return after Justin Gaethje knocked him out at UFC White House in June, and Renato Moicano has a pitch: make it him. The Brazilian veteran argues Topuria — 17-0 across his whole MMA career before that night, and 9-0 in the UFC with seven finishes — needs a soft landing, and he's happy to be it.

Moicano's logic is blunt. He thinks the UFC either feeds Topuria to Paddy Pimblett or hands him a confidence-builder, because in his words the former two-division champ is rattled. Six months ago, Moicano says, he was calling Topuria a possible all-time great. Now? You're only as good as your last fight.

The Humiliation Theory

What makes Moicano's offer less charitable than it sounds is his read on Topuria's state of mind. He expects a wounded Topuria to be more dangerous, not less — training like an animal and forced into what he called the "humility shoes" after a public beating on the biggest card the promotion has ever staged. Topuria's mistake, by Moicano's telling, was believing he could flatten a man as durable as Gaethje on demand. He almost did. Then he got dismantled.

Those finishes Topuria stacked weren't against nobodies, either. He stopped Charles Oliveira — now ranked #3 at lightweight with a 37-11 record — plus Max Holloway and former featherweight king Alexander Volkanovski, who at 28-4 is back in a title fight against Movsar Evloev. That's the résumé Moicano wants to test himself against.

First, though, there's business at UFC Vegas 123. Moicano headlines against Tom Nolan after getting pulled from UFC 331 when original opponent Brian Ortega (16-5, now #11 and booked against Dan Hooker) withdrew with a cut. Moicano says he doesn't script his callouts — he gets the win, looks up, and says whatever's in his heart. It's worked since 2022, so he's not about to change the formula.

The one line Moicano drew: he'll play the "easy prey" for a star on the comeback, but not for the division's fresh blood. With Salahdine Parnasse debuting in brutal fashion and undefeated PFL champ Usman Nurmagomedov potentially inbound, Moicano made it clear a matchup against that kind of prospect would cost the UFC a lot of money or nothing at all.

At 37, with a YouTube channel pushing 400,000 subscribers, Moicano says he gets the company's math — you build young guys, not aging ones. He's not bitter about it. He just wants a say in who he fights and when, and he'd rather face a legend coming off a loss than a future one on the rise. We'll see if the UFC agrees.