Ilia Topuria has claimed that ever since he met Conor McGregor back at UFC 264 in 2021, he could feel that the Irishman had a ‘black energy’ that he’d never felt before.

Just one year into his UFC tenure, Ilia Topuria found himself on the undercard of one of the biggest stars combat sports has ever seen, Conor McGregor.

The Irishman was set to return to the Octagon for the second time in 2021 to settle his rivalry against Dustin Poirier.

Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesIlia Topuria claims Conor McGregor had ‘energy from hell’ at UFC 264

Ahead of their second meeting earlier in the year, McGregor and ‘The Diamond’ were extremely respectful and it was a surprising change from his usual pre-fight antics.

Despite that, the energy between ‘The Notorious’ and Poirier completely changed in the lead-up to their trilogy and the Irishman tapped back into his old self of trash-talking his opponent.

On the undercard of the huge event was a featherweight fight between ‘El Matador’ and Ryan Hall. At the time, there was a lot of excitement regarding the Spaniard, however, no one really knew how far he would go.

Topuria went on to render Hall unconscious in the first round after a huge KO punch, with that being his first experience fighting on a big UFC event.

McGregor of course went on to lose to Poirier in the first round of their main event after suffering a broken ankle.

Following the event, Topuria came out and commented on what it was like to fight on McGregor’s undercard, claiming that he felt extremely bad energy from the Irishman.

“Super bad vibes,” Topuria began to explain.

“Look. Analyzing people as human beings, let’s look at Conor. A guy, his wife, his children, his family, I can’t give an opinion. I don’t know how these people are. He might be an excellent person and I perceived his energy in a different way from what it is.

“He simply came to work to put on a show but the feeling I had when he was around was: Keep him away! Keep him away!

“Just a terrible energy. I swear, it felt like his aura came from hell, you know what I’m saying? I want to be away from this dude, he has black energy, I had never felt that before,” Topuria continued.

Conor McGregor and Ilia Topuria have shared words since then

It’s fair to say Topuria’s opinion of McGregor hasn’t changed since their first meeting in 2021 and the Spaniard was hopeful that one day they would share the cage together.

False rumors recently began to circulate that the UFC was exploring the potential of McGregor vs Topuria in 2025, however, McGregor came out and revealed he is in talks to fight Logan Paul in the boxing ring instead.

‘The Notorious’ has previously claimed that he would ‘slap Topuria silly’ when asked about a potential fight against him during a live stream.