Ilia Topuria is enjoying the extra breathing room following his move to 155-pounds.

The former UFC featherweight champion makes his debut in the UFC lightweight division in the main event of UFC 317 later this month in Las Vegas, where he will battle the former champion Charles Oliveira for the vacant world title. The Spaniard (who is of Georgian extraction) has long spoken of his desire to test the waters in the UFC’s 155-pound division — a decision which required him to relinquish the featherweight title which he had won from the former (and once again current) champion Alexander Volkanovski and subsequently defended against Max Holloway.

And as Topuria himself explained, the decision wasn’t just down to personal ambitions — but also the realities of weight-cutting.

“When you’re cutting weight and you can’t eat or drink water, you don’t care about any material things,” Topuria said to ESPN Deportes, as translated by Championship Rounds and noted by MMA Fighting.

“They can give you bags of money, they can give you all the cars you want, you don’t care at all. If they give you this little glass of water and say, ‘You can drink this and it won’t increase your weight,’ I’ll give you whatever it takes in that moment. I’m so low. I feel terrible. It’s like sitting naked in the middle of the street. I feel terrible. So I didn’t want to suffer anymore. I didn’t want to go through that.”

Topuria, at just 28, says that he has already achieved what was his overall ambition of gaining a UFC world title, which he said made the decision to step away from the 145-pound title more easy to stomach.

“I’d already done it throughout my career,” he said of the cut to 145. “I’d already achieved my dream, which was to become a world champion. I had to close that chapter because I didn’t want to suffer anymore. Because honestly, it’s like living in the desert and I wanted to live on the beach.”

That said, Topuria notes that he would have preferred the option of challenging Islam Makhachev for the 155-pound title. The Russia has also relinquished his belt in advance of moving upwards, where he will challenge welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena.

“Why did I want to fight Islam?” he asked. “For one simple fact, and it’s the same with Volkanovski. If you beat someone and take the title from them at 145, it had to be Volk. It had to be Volk for me at that point because he had the most history in the division. He was the one who dominated everyone. He was the greatest.

“It’s the same for me with Islam. I wanted to fight him simply because he had dominated everyone. So, who’s beating everyone? Islam. Well, I want to fight him because then the prize is much bigger.”