Coach Conversation | Ilia Topuria vs Charles Oliveira

Kyte: The lightweight title is vacant, and the next person to hold the belt will either be former featherweight champ Ilia Topuria or previous titleholder Charles Oliveira.

What’s the best trait of each fighter?

Marshall: Are we talking physical trait or any trait; what do you want?

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Kyte: Anything. 

Marshall: For Topuria, it’s his confidence; he just believes so much, in my opinion. Charles? He’s got a lot of belief — I don’t think it’s belief like Topuria has right now because he’s got some Ls in there, and it’s hard when you have an L — but Charles is very durable. 

We’ll see how that’s gonna play out in this fight because there ain’t nobody more durable that Max Holloway and we saw how that went.

Kyte: So I agree with you on the confidence point and it’s something he’s had from the jump, plus, like you’re saying with Charles, it’s easier to have that confidence when there is a zero in the loss column; nobody has made you question yourself, question whether you should be that confident.

As a coach, if you’ve got an athlete that has that confidence, are there ways to channel it, funnel it or do you just let them run with it?

Marshall: I don’t know because I’ve never had a fighter that is like that.

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I can’t answer that question because I’ve never had a champion with a zero or a champion with a one. Islam (Makhachev) has that confidence and he has a “1,” but it was a while ago and kind of flukey and yada yada. 

But I don’t know because I’ve never experienced it, so I can’t speak from experience on that.

Kyte: From a physical tool, physical trait standpoint, what’s his best physical trait?

Marshall: Topuria? It’s his power — he’s got ungodly power — and he’s patient with it. He’s not one of those — you have to combine the mental trait of patience with it because a lot of guys have power, but they go chuckin’ and they start hunting the KO and it doesn’t come because they’re not doing the things that make the KO come. 

Kyte: Joe Pyfer in that fight with Kelvin Gastelum. Drop a dude that’s got a chin and suddenly it’s “I’m gonna knock him out!” when it should be “just keep touching him.”

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I would say all three things work in concert: you have the confidence because everyone you’ve faced has fallen and you’ve stopped most of them, and you know you have the ability to apply it correctly, so you walk in there with supreme swagger.

Volkanovski? All right. Max Holloway? I’ll get there.

Marshall: He’s super-patient, and Charles gets hit, and that’s a big thing in this fight is that Charles gets hit.

Charles takes a lot of risks and he gets cracked. Is he gonna stay awake?

Kyte: We’ll get to that part.

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With Oliveira, you said it was his durability, and I would argue that has changed over the course of his career. He’s always been durable, to a degree, but... 

Marshall: He wilted.

Kyte: Right, which is why it was interesting to me when that narrative was circulating ahead of the first Chandler fight that he pushed back as hard as he did. We saw it. I was in Vancouver when he was beating Anthony Pettis, didn’t finish him, and then kind of just folded.

It’s changed though. Any thoughts on how you get that to flip? Is it trust? Is it faith?

Marshall: For him it’s faith, but all belief is faith, right? You have to start believing in anything before there is actual evidence.

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Kyte: You’ve got to believe you’re gonna be able to get through it before you’ve even been faced with it. 

Marshall: Right! He had to believe he could get through it first, and then get through it. You can chalk that up to whatever you want, but you have to do that first, and then you can get that confidence.

Once you start to have that confidence, here it comes.

It had to come in the fights where he started to get hurt, and the Chandler fight was the big one. Then it was on to the Poirier fight, the Gaethje fight; he got hurt, but he didn’t crumble any more.

But I don’t think that comes into question this weekend. I don’t think he’s going to wilt — this is “can he stay awake?”

Path to Victory

Kyte: All right, going off that — what’s the path to victory for each guy?

Marshall: Charles has to get his back; he’s not winning any other way. He has to get behind him. He’s got to be hunting the back; it’s his best spot.

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I don’t think he has the power to sleep Topruia, but he has the power to hurt him, and if he can do that, he has to be disciplined enough to have a strategy in place where he’s finding the back off hurting him, kind of like how GSP did with Bisping: he hurt him, he dropped him, and he got on top. 

He allowed Bisping to start to get up with the release of pressure, and then he took the back. And Charles is very good with this — he’s so good with this — but his strategy, in my opinion, is that it has to be the back.

If Ryan Hall isn’t getting you from the bottom, then Charles Oliveira isn’t getting you from the bottom. Ryan Hall is super-crafty from the bottom — and that’s no knock on Charles’ jiu jitsu.

He’s gotta get the back. Find it. Hunt the back. Close the distance, hunt the back.

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Kyte: Ideally when you’ve got him hurt, just because closing the distance and trying to wrestle is still a challenge. 

Marshall: It’s a challenge, but I think it could be a strategy early. If he can tire those arms out, do some things to slow Topuria down.

Kyte: And for Topuria, it’s continuing to do the Topuria thing of patiently marching guys down that we wondered all last year if he could do it to Volkanovski and Holloway, and he did.

Marshall: Be patient and touch the chin. Cut him off, get him on his heels.

(Eric) Nicksick likes to call it “corner-posting” — keep working your angles so Oliveira can’t come forward. If he can come forward, he can start to apply the pressure, he can start to put you to the cage, and he finds the back well against the cage; he’s like Khabib that way.

FREE FIGHTS: Topuria vs Holloway | Oliveira vs Chandler 2

If he can get behind you, he jumps on the back well, so, for Topuria, it’s the forward pressure, cutting him off, putting him on his heels, and being very patient. He’s gonna have to touch the body early, too.

Kyte: It’s the Volkanovski game plan — hem him in, keep the pressure on, eventually find the shot. Max was a little different, but he still got clapped.

One Coaching Curiosity

Kyte: In terms of a curiosity point, what’s the thing you’re looking to see or the question you want answered in this matchup?

Marshall: You always wonder what the extra 10 pounds does? Does the power come? We have weight classes for a reason. The last time we saw somebody do this, they got smoked; he had a good fight, and then he got smoked.

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Kyte: Well, the last time we saw him do this, he got hurt bad in the first round against Jai Herbert, which is the little thing sitting in the back of my head similar to your “what do the 10 pounds do?” question. 

I think at ’45, his power is great, his chin is good, he’s defensively sound, and he can pressure, he can control, and he can bully.

Now, Jai Herbert is super-long and lanky and whatever…

Marshall: But so is Charles.

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Kyte: Absolutely, and if you get through this one and you’re the champ, you’ve got to get in there with hitters. Like what would a fight with Gaethje look like, because my brain thinks, “If Jai Herbert is putting you down…”

To his credit, he responded, got the finish in the next round, but still.

Marshall: We have weight classes for a reason, and only some real special m*****f*****s have gone up and won.

BJ Penn, Georges St-Pierre, Jon Jones, Henry Cejudo. 

Kyte: “DC” went back up, but he was a heavyweight for a while. Amanda Nunes went up.

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Marshall: Special people. Only G.O.A.T. consideration people… and Cejudo. 

Kyte: Only G.O.A.T. folks, so we’ll see if he’s in that class.