UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria wants to be a two-division champion. After all, ‘El Matador’ has been calling for a fight with lightweight kingpin Islam Makhachev since capturing the 145lbs crown title last year. While most wrote this off as Topuria just talking trash, things got serious after the Spanish national’s UFC 308 win over Max Holloway.

Topuria said in a subsequent interview that he was serious about moving up and called out former 155-pound champ Charles Oliveira. While the featherweight champ later took back his call-out and clarified that he will continue at 145lbs for the time being, Topuria is just 27 right now and has his entire career in front of him. Of course, their matchup is a pretty electrifying one with the MMA world, including fellow fighters predicting how their fight would go.

Andrew Whitelaw, in an ES Exclusive interview, asked undefeated promising featherweight prospect Austin Bashi about how he sees a Topuria-Oliveira clash going. At just 23 years old, he is already a former two-promotion champion and turned down offers to join the UFC previously since he wanted to be ready for MMA’s biggest stage. He finally decided to join the promotion last year and earned his contract with a fantastic performance on Dana White’s Contender Series.

All of this is to say that he knows a thing or two about fighting. Here is what the newcomer had to say about a possible Oliveira-Topuria clash at lightweight. “Topuria I heard, might be fighting him [Oliveira] at lightweight. What do you make of that?” To which Bashi had a pretty surprising prediction. “Yeah, honestly I see Oliveira getting the finish against him. He is just that good,” Bashi said.

Oliveira is indeed that good. After all, the Brazilian dynamo holds the UFC record for most finishes in UFC history at 20 and is more than capable of stopping Topuria. Especially since he is bigger and fights at a higher weight class than the Spanish-Georgian champ. On the other hand, ‘El Matador’ is also a generational talent. After all, he has not just defeated but knocked out the greatest featherweights in the sport’s history in his last two fights.

He has one-punch concussive power in his hands and also has fantastic wrestling which could help him deal with ‘Do Bronx’s lethal grappling skills. This is why a fight between the two is so interesting for fans. However, for now, Topuria will have to concentrate on clearing out the featherweight division.

How soon can Ilia Topuria move up to 155lbs?

There are only two real opponents for Ilia Topuria to make his second featherweight title defense against. The first and most likely is Alexander Volkanovski, who has been waiting for a rematch with the champ since losing the title to him early last year. In fact, the UFC had ‘Volk’ enter the Octagon after Topuria’s last fight for a face-off, which seemingly hints that a rematch between the two is next.

On the other hand, there is also #3 ranked Diego Lopes, who has had a fantastic run of form recently and is perhaps the most exciting contender in the entire division at the moment. There is also the possibility that undefeated #4 ranked Movsar Evloev gets the green light for a title shot next, but that is pretty unlikely.

Since Evloev is the only man to have beaten Lopes in the UFC so far, fans feel that an official #1 contender bout is in order for the young fighters. In the meantime, Topuria and Volkanovski could fight it out for the title with the winner of Lopes-Evloev next in line. If ‘El Matador’ is still the champion after rematching the Aussie ace and fighting one of the two young and hungry lions, he would have a much better argument to make for moving up and may well get a shot at the lightweight champion straight away, perhaps by the second half of next year.

Or he may have to fight a top prospect like Oliveira, against whom Bashi doesn’t see Topuria winning as he said in our Exclusive ES interview. What do you think about Bashi’s take on a possible Topuria-Oliveira clash?