Ilia Topuria’s life story is headed to the big screen…
Filmax has unveiled its latest pickup, director Giampaolo Manfreda’s ultimate fighting documentary Matador, about the 27-year-old Georgian and Spanish world champion MMA fighter.
Produced by Señor Mono, with the support of Spanish pay television giant Movistar+ and Filmax, Matador will hit Spanish theaters on September. 19.
Having acquired international rights, Filmax is offering distributors in other territories the opportunity to release the film in their own markets around that same time.
Nicknamed El Matador, Topuria became the UFC world champion in February in a blockbuster match against Alexander “The Great” Volkanovski, ending a four-year title reign.
Matador documents eight months of Topuria’s career, beginning with his fight against Josh Emmett in Florida, which elevated him into the global top five of UFC’s fighter rankings, and culminating with his title match against Volkanovski.
The film demonstrates the incredible training and personal sacrifices a top fighter must endure to reach the highest levels of the sport. It was produced by a team that was given unprecedented access into Topuria’s personal and professional lives.
“There is a point when you become so concentrated on the training you forget about all the cameras around you, all the microphones, about everything,” Topuria has explained. “The good thing about this movie is that it’s exactly that. You’re gonna see Ilia Topuria without any filters. I hope everyone enjoys seeing that.”
During a Madrid presentation of the documentray, a clip was shown of Topuria cutting weight in which the soon-to-be champion is put through torturous starvation and dehydration techniques to get below the threshold needed to qualify for the bout. According to the fighter, what happens in the ring is fun and games, and a job he loves to do. Cutting weight, he said, is a more brutal foe than any fighter he can face in the octagon.
Several questions were asked about his future, including whether he could imagine acting in a fiction production someday.
“My dream was never just to become a champion. I want to be a legend. I want to leave my fingerprint on this sport and I won’t rest until I achieve that,” he answered with no hesitation.
According to producer Iñigo Pérez-Tabernero, “Producing this movie has been one of my life’s greatest gifts because it has allowed me to delve deep into the process of how a person becomes a star and manages to achieve everything that he always dreamed of. But even more important than that, it has allowed me to get to know and to portray the person behind the celebrity, a person who fearlessly opened the doors to their private life for the whole world to see.”
“We are sure we are going to have a very busy summer. I can’t think of a more interesting and attractive product for the international market than Matador, a film which so wonderfully portrays the process behind creating a legend and offers us a close-up look at one of the most attractive, powerful and magnetic figures in international sport and entertainment,” Ivan Diaz, head of international at Filmax, added. “Our clients have already started to show a lot of interest in the project, and we are sure that the film will make a big impact in the international marketplace from September until the end of the year.”