Alexander Volkanovski has put retirement on the table, and he did it before the opening bell. The UFC featherweight champion said a disappointing performance against Movsar Evloev at UFC 333 could be the end of the road, telling Sportskeeda that if things go wrong, “we’ll call it a day.”
The fight headlines UFC 333 on Oct. 24 in Abu Dhabi. Volkanovski framed it simply. He has no interest in hanging around the division as a name on a poster if he can’t hang with the best guys in it. That’s a refreshingly blunt answer from a champion, and it’s the kind most fighters dodge until the week after a loss.
The timing makes it louder. Volkanovski hasn’t been losing. He’s been winning title fights.
He got the 145-pound belt back at UFC 314 with a unanimous decision over Diego Lopes for the vacant title, which Ilia Topuria left behind when he moved up to lightweight. Volkanovski got dropped in Round 2 of that one and still banked the five rounds. He then beat Lopes a second time at UFC 325 for his first defense of this second reign. Before all that, Topuria took the belt from him at UFC 298 in 2024, and that knockout is the reason people started asking how much he had left.
The answer, on paper, is plenty. Volkanovski has won 25 of his last 28 fights and has competed in 11 straight UFC title fights, per Yahoo Sports. Uncrowned’s October pound-for-pound panel has him at No. 3 on the men’s list, behind only Islam Makhachev and Petr Yan.
There’s a twist to this booking that Uncrowned pointed out. Evloev’s loudest advocate for a title shot was Volkanovski himself. He asked for the hardest available fight and got it.
The stylistic read from people in the sport leans toward the champ. Aaron Pico told Full Mount MMA that Evloev needs a knockout to win, pointing to how much trouble Makhachev had keeping Volkanovski on the mat in their UFC 284 fight. “Movsar can take him down, but the problem is holding him down,” Pico said.
UFC 333 is stacked around him, too. Yan and Merab Dvalishvili run back their bantamweight rivalry on the same Abu Dhabi card, so the featherweight champ won’t be the only guy walking into the desert with a lot on the line.
My take: I like a champion who tells you the truth before the fight instead of after the loss. Volkanovski picked Evloev, he’s 25-3 across his last 28, and he’s still saying out loud that he’ll walk if he looks ordinary. Fighters who say that usually mean it. If he wins on Oct. 24, nobody will remember this quote. If he doesn’t, it becomes the first line of his retirement story.
