Ilia Topuria does not hand out compliments for the sake of it, which is exactly why his warning about Lone'er Kavanagh should land with a thud. When a fighter still only two UFC fights into his career starts getting singled out as a future problem at 125, people around the division ought to take notice. This is how hype becomes momentum, and momentum becomes a proper problem for everybody else.
Kavanagh's rise has not come out of nowhere. At age eight, he started training martial arts, turned professional in 2019, stopped Glody Matusiwa with a second round TKO, won four fights in a row, then punched his ticket to the UFC with a first round knockout of An Tuan Ho on Dana White's contender series. Three months later he made his UFC debut and beat Jose Ochoa by unanimous decision. In March 2025, he went to London and beat Felipe dos Santos by unanimous decision on the undercard of Leon Edwards v Sean Brady. That is the kind of route that earns attention the hard way.
And then Topuria turned around on the Joe Rogan Experience and essentially said the quiet part out loud: there is a guy coming up at 125 who is going to be a problem. He called Kavanagh a very skilful fighter. Kavanagh, speaking to SPORTbible, said it felt crazy seeing Topuria give him a shoutout and admitted he was grateful for everything that had happened. That is a sensible reaction, because when a fighter you look up to starts talking about you like this, the conversation changes fast.
Why this matters now
This is not just about praise for praise's sake. Kavanagh is on a Conor McGregor undercard this weekend, and that is exactly the kind of stage that can turn a promising name into a genuine talking point. McGregor is back after five years away from the octagon, which only adds more eyes to the card and more pressure on the fighters trying to use it as a launchpad. If Kavanagh performs again, the noise around him will get louder, and in this sport loud usually becomes real very quickly.
Topuria's words also tell you something else: the UFC's next wave is being spotted early, and Kavanagh is already in that conversation. He is 27, young enough to be growing, experienced enough to be dangerous, and now publicly framed by one of the sport's biggest names as a future issue in the division. That is not a small thing. It is the sort of endorsement that can accelerate a career before the wider audience has fully caught up.
Whether Kavanagh becomes the next major threat at 125 is still something he has to prove inside the octagon. But the raw ingredients are obvious enough: a tidy record, momentum from London, and now praise from Topuria that carries real weight. The UFC loves a prospect until it has to cash the check. Kavanagh has just been handed a very big one.
