"Experience is the best teacher," and Dana White has a bit of both. The UFC CEO had already hinted at what EL MUNDO has confirmed with Ilia Topuria's team. "I'm not a doctor, but it looked like he had a fracture in the orbital bone," he stated at the press conference following Freedom 250, where Justin Gaethje defeated the Hispanic-Georgian in the main fight.
The fighter has two non-displaced fractures in the orbital bones that do not require surgery. The recovery will be slow and tedious because these types of injuries affect the muscles that move the eye and can cause headaches or diplopia, the famous double vision that Marc Márquez suffered from four years ago.
The fighter has already left the hospital in Washington DC, where he was taken immediately after the fight, and will return home to recover. The recovery time is still unknown but will depend on the extent of the fracture: mild ones could take between two and six weeks, while severe ones could extend up to 12 weeks.
The troubles began with that fateful uppercut with slightly open fingers, as seen in several enlarged images on social media, at the 3.27-minute mark of the first round. From that first round, the fighter lost part of the vision in his right eye, and the punishment suffered, especially in the third round, ended up limiting the vision in his other eye as well.
Between the third and fourth rounds, the UFC doctor already suggested stopping the fight, but Ilia's willpower led to a change in the doctor's decision. However, in the final break, Aleksandre, upon hearing from his brother that he couldn't see, called it quits.
Topuria left the octagon in the south garden of the White House as if wanting to cover his face with a hood. The aftermath of fighting three rounds with diminished vision in a lightweight title fight was significant on his face.
But that image has not affected the fighter's spirits, nor has he sought excuses for his first UFC defeat. "Justin, congratulations. You said you would leave your mark on my face... and you did. You took away the sight of my right eye in the first round, and by the end of the second, also the left. No excuses," he wrote on social media.
The Hispanic-Georgian stated that he had one of the "best camps" of his life. "I will recover. I will rest. And I will come back stronger, wiser, and much more dangerous. And believe me... this story between us is far from over. We will have our rematch," he concluded in a text where he asked Gaethje to fight again.