Ilia Topuria's excuses are officially out of runway. The regulator who was cageside at UFC Freedom 250 has shot down the former champion's insinuation that Justin Gaethje had anything funny going on inside his gloves — and he didn't mince words about it.
“"His gloves and wraps were fine and totally within regulations. Also well inspected by multiple inspectors."”
"His gloves and wraps were fine and totally within regulations," Andy Foster, the executive director of the California State Athletic Commission and one of three regulators overseeing the June 14 card on the White House South Lawn, told USA TODAY Sports. "Also well inspected by multiple inspectors."
The controversy started on X, where Topuria — who suffered severe bruising and broken orbital bones in the beating — wrote: "Next time I'll make sure they check Justin's gloves so he doesn't put anything weird on them." It was the kind of post that does enormous numbers online and zero good for a legacy. Topuria retired on his stool before the fifth round after four rounds of the worst punishment of his career, and the glove claim landed like a fighter who wasn't ready to accept how the night went.
Foster had a particularly good answer for why the allegation doesn't hold up in MMA the way it might in boxing. Professional boxing gloves run eight to twelve ounces — plenty of room to hide something, as the ugly history of loaded wraps has shown. MMA gloves are four ounces and fingerless. "Harder to pull that off," Foster said. There's just nowhere to put it, and inspectors watch the wrapping process up close.
Gaethje, for his part, treated the whole thing with the energy of a man who just beat the unbeatable guy. "Oh, people don't believe that," he said in an interview posted by Championship Rounds. On The Joe Rogan Experience, he turned it into a compliment: "People saying I got bricks in my gloves, what a compliment." When your hands are apparently so dangerous that a former two-division champion thinks they must be illegal, you take the win.
The wider context doesn't help Topuria's case either. The fight's stoppage was his own corner's call — they threw in the towel with their bloodied fighter sitting on the stool, which is the one thing corners are there to do. And with the regulator, the inspectors, and the four-ounce reality of MMA gloves all aligned, there's nowhere left for the claim to go.
So where does "El Matador" go from here? Back to work, presumably. The gloves were clean. The loss was real. The only way forward is the one he's always talked about — through whoever's next, the hard way.
