Ilia Topuria’s manager said that they had agreed to the Islam Makhachev fight until the offer came up too small. 

Topuria will be fighting on the White House card on June 14 looking to unify his UFC Lightweight Championship against Interim Champion Justin Gaethje. However, he has since come out via social media to indicate a fight with Welterweight Champion Makhachev had been in discussion before he sustained an injury, though he saw that as just an excuse. 

Speaking on the situation on the Anik & Florian Podcast, Topuria’s manager Malki Kawa said that they had initially chased the Makhachev fight because they thought it would mean more money. 

“Then we get a call that says hey if we can make a fight, you can fight Islam or Gaethje. We actually said let’s take Islam. We’d love to fight Islam,” he said, reasoning, “Money’s involved, and the bigger the fight the more money it is. So we wanted to make the most amount of money we possibly could so we were focused on getting the Islam fight.”

However, when the final offer came in, Kawa said that it was a price they could not agree to. 

“I got asked, ‘Would guys want to do this or that?’ We said absolutely. They gave us a number. We said absolutely not. And then we didn’t hear anything after that. The money that was offered was so small… We’re like, ‘Not at those numbers.'”

Makhachev had also responded to Topuria’s initial post to say that he was the one who had ducked the fight, referencing his manager asking for billions and saying he would fight him for free.

This weekend, Jon Moxley will finally get to learn whether he’s better than Konosuke Takeshita or not, as he puts his AEW Continental Championship on the line against “The Alpha” in a no time limit match at AEW Revolution. But win or loss, Moxley is already looking towards the future, and perhaps some more gold south of the border.

On Wednesday night’s “CMLL Informa,” it was announced that Moxley would be returning to CMLL at Homenaje a Dos Leyendas, alongside Death Riders stablemates Daniel Garcia, Wheeler Yuta, and Marina Shafir. Accompanied by Shafir, the trio will headline the show, challenging El Sky Team, Mascara Dorada, Neon, and lucha libre mega star Mistico for the CMLL World Trios Championships.

While Moxley wrestled in Arena Mexico last year for “AEW Grand Slam: Mexico City,” it will be his first proper appearance for CMLL in almost two years, when he, Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli, and Matt Sydal faced off against Mistico, Blue Panther, Ultimo Guerrero, and Volador Jr. in the main event of Homenaje a Dos Leyendas 2024. Meanwhile, Yuta wrestled two matches for CMLL in his career while Garcia has become a semi-regular member of CMLL since first wrestling there in 2025, even training at times at the CMLL wrestling school.

The trio will look to add CMLL gold to the Death Riders’ ranks, as member Claudio Castagnoli is the current reigning and defending CMLL World Heavyweight Championship. Death Riders vs. El Sky Team is one of the two marquee matches for CMLL’s second biggest show of the year, along with the retirement match of El Satanico, who can be seen sitting on a throne in the Death Riders-Sky Team poster. The 76 year old lucha libre legend will end his career in a three-way match, taking on familiar foes Atlantis and Blue Panther.

Cain Velasquez posted a video thanking everyone for their support and encouragement following his release from prison. 

The former UFC Heavyweight Champion and AAA wrestler had served an 11 month sentence after pleading no content to various charges including attempted murder. Velasquez had chased a vehicle, shooting a man inside it, in February 2022. He had not intended to hit the man shot, but rather another named Harry Goularte Jr., someone previously arrested for sexually abusing Velasquez’s four-year-old son in a daycare facility. The man who was shot was Goularte’s father. 

“Now it’s been a couple of weeks since my release, I’ve had some time to get back into things, get back into a normal way of life, get used to doing the normal things,” Velasquez said in his first address since his release. “I just wanted to thank everybody for their love and support. Your words of inspiration, of encouragement, just constantly lifting me up. Myself and my family.”

Velasquez said he will be taking some time before he gets back to doing what he used to, and will be spending time with his family and getting re-integrated. “I didn’t want overwhelm myself with the pace of life I was getting used to,” he said. 

He finished by once more thanking everyone for the support before saying, “It’s good to be out.”

Velasquez held the UFC Heavyweight title twice and retired with a 14-3 record after a loss to Francis Ngannou in 2019, making the transition to wrestling with WWE. He fought one broadcast match against Brock Lesnar, the man he had beaten in UFC to become Heavyweight Champion, for the WWE Championship before being cut in 2020. He had been working with AAA until December 2022. 

While Ronda Rousey has been critical of modern day UFC, speaking ahead of her return fight against Gina Carano on Netflix in May, she went further to separate the institution and its President Dana White. 

During the MVP and Netflix-presented press conference for her fight on May 16, Rousey was asked whether she had any concerns that White would take issue with what she had been saying. 

“Oh he knows the White House cards sucks,” she laughed. “He knows that they were pushing this for over a year and it fell extremely short of expectations. I mean, he was so upset about it, he was talking about a fight falling out the day before. I can guarantee you he’s not happy with it either, and he’s the one that taught me by example to speak my mind.”

Rousey had said that White was the one who encouraged her to seek a better deal for her comeback bout, having originally pitched it to be staged in UFC; there was a disparity in offers made before and after the promotion’s switch from pay-per-view to streaming this year. 

“He gave me his blessing to go out and do it on my own,” she said. “After, I let him know before anybody else that I had gone to Netflix, I didn’t want him to be upset with me. And he was like, ‘I could never be upset with you. I love you so much. I want you to do great. I want this to be successful.’ He’s always been my friend before anything else.”

She continued to say that much of her criticism toward UFC now stems from the fact White isn’t the owner. “He isn’t calling the shots and he isn’t running things the way that he wants. Because he’s an employee of the company now. He’s not an owner and I think it was a big mistake of theirs to not let him just run things the way that he always has.”