“His camp also alluded to the fact that Islam is easy to figure out — I don’t know what their plan is, I really don’t. All I know is we are prepared for a super tough JDM and don’t care what I hear on any side. I know what we are dealing with we’re dealing with a hell of a champion that we respect.I’ve watched the fight between him and Belal Muhammad seven times, and I’ve never done that with anybody. Seven times I've watched it, because I respect him. He is good. I believe we are going to beat him, but we are doing our homework”

– via Submission Radio, on the intense preparation for Jack Della Maddalena

“Ilia Topuria, I would say with him, stay out of boxing range one million percent stay out of boxing range. He's got the best boxing in the business in MMA. He's got it so much that he even thinks he can be [Terence] Crawford. You'd need to work your kicks angles with him, knees, Muay Thai would be some a good specialty.”

“He's got decent wrestling. From people I've spoken to that have trained with him, he's got this decent jiu”

– jitsu also. So, he's almost the complete package, but he's not. He lacks the kicking area. So, the weakest link on him would be the kicking area. And then you have to test your grappling with him to see if your if yours is better than his. We've yet to see how great it is. It's not great.