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UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski returns to action at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi this Saturday, paired up with undefeated 20-0 Russian Movsar Evloev.<\/p>\n
Evloev took the long road to the title, likely in part due to a complete lack of finishes in the UFC (though at least they kept him around). And it’s a fight Volkanovski has been open to all along.<\/p>\n
Speaking during Wednesday’s UFC 333 media day, two-time champ Volkanovski stated that he was “excited to get back in there. A new challenge, a challenge that I’ve been asking for for a while. I’ve said plenty of times that he deserved the title fight, and here we are.”<\/p>\n
The narrative ahead of the fight is less about whether Evloev is good enough to beat the champ, and more about whether Volkanovski, at age 38, has started to decline. That’s something Volkanivski ultimately understands.<\/p>\n
“They are gonna wonder, they’re gonna wonder every time I step in there, am I declining? What’s he going to look like? And that’s fair. Obviously they have every right to think that,” observed Volkanovski. “But I plan on going out there and, as I said many months ago, that I believe that the headlines after this one will be ‘this is one of Volk’s best performances yet,’ and ‘how is he doing this at 38-years old?’ type thing. That’s what I plan on doing.”<\/p>\n
“And that’s no disrespect to Movsar. It’s just stylistically and where I am, I’m on an incredible nick, and just ready to go out there and not only win, but win in pretty wild fashion too.”<\/p>\n
While Evloev is the immediate task at hand, Alexander Volkanovski has got fans talking after floating the idea of a champ versus champ retirement fight between himself and lightweight Justin Gaethje. After earning the 155lb title back at UFC Freedom 250 in June, Gaethje has yet to make his next move known.<\/p>\n
“I’m not the one to just call for title fights. There’s so many guys that are deserving in that lightweight division. But I just look at it at a sense where, if I can fit into this equation of the lightweight division, it could be the fact that we know Justin’s like unsure of what he wants to do. Does he want to have a fight again? Maybe one more? Where’s he at with it? He doesn’t want to do rematches, I haven’t fought him,” noted Volkanovski. “I don’t have any plans of retiring, other than if we were to do something like this, maybe we do our last fight, super fight, champion versus champion, we’re not holding the divisions because we’re going to see ourselves off then let the divisions do their thing.”<\/p>\n
“I just think that that could happen, so that’s why I threw it out there. And there’s a lot of moving parts for that to happen. I’ve obviously got a job to do, I’ll focus on that, and we’ll see what happens,” the featherweight champ finished.<\/p>\n