‘Illuminated’ hype killer Charles Oliveira ready to defeat Ilia Topuria at UFC 317

‘Do Bronx’ is saying one thing and one thing only coming into UFC 317: the champion has a name, and it is Charles Oliveira.

Ryan Harkness breaks down daily mixed martial arts (MMA) news, providing unique context to stories that only 15 years of obsessing over the sport can provide, having worked for FOX Sports, Yahoo! Sports, UPROXX, MSN, Bleacher Report, HDNet and CagePotato, among others, before joining MMAmania.com in 2017.

Ilia Topuria has arrived in Las Vegas for UFC 317 with all the hype and a significant odds advantage leading into his vacant UFC lightweight title fight against Charles Oliveira. But that hasn’t shaken the faith “Do Bronx” has that he’ll win.

The bookies have Topuria a wild -425 favorite to Oliveira, who sits at +330. That’s pretty crazy considering Oliveira’s resume, but “El Matador” has made closer odds against Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway seem foolish in retrospect. Topuria’s confidence is through the roof, but so is Oliveira’s. He sees a win on Saturday night (June 28th, 2025) as an inevitability.

“I have all the confidence in the world that on Saturday, you’re going to hear Charles Oliveira is the champion, and I’m going to be the champion once again,” he told UFC.com through a translator. “I came to the UFC to make history. I am illuminated. I tell people to listen to what I’m saying: I’m going to be a champion again.”

At the UFC 317 media day, Oliveira pushed back against all of Topuria’s claims of an early knockout finish.

“All of those who came up with this huge hype went back down,” the Brazilian said. “All of them who came in talking a lot of stuff, when they ran into me, they went back.”

“So what they say, think or believe, it doesn’t make any difference to me,” Oliveira concluded. “If he has firepower in his hands, he’s never seen my hands. If he thinks he has jiu jitsu, he’s never seen my jiu jitsu. I’ve never been as ready as I am today.”

There’s no doubt the odds are closer than they appear on sportsbooks — this could be anyone’s fight. Those doubting Charles Oliveira’s ability to make this a scrap need to revisit his fight library. But you also can’t deny Ilia Topuria’s knockout ability. Will it translate a division up, though?

These are questions that will only be answered on UFC 317 fight night as we rush towards the biggest, most exciting match up of 2025 thus far.