Fast facts
- Division: Heavyweight (No. 5 in Knockout Daily’s rankings)
- Record: 40-11
- Nationality: Russian
- Team/gym: Strela Team
- Notable wins: Sergei Pavlovich
When BetOnline.ag posted its opening lines for UFC 335, the number that got people talking was Sergei Pavlovich at -130 over Alex Pereira. DraftKings went further and listed Pavlovich at -166, according to MMA Junkie. Every preview since has described the Russian the same way: the knockout artist, the giant who flattened Tallison Teixeira in 39 seconds at UFC Macau in May. The UFC’s own account called him “The boogeyman of the heavyweight division.”
Read those previews closely and you find a name tucked into the middle of a paragraph, usually in the same sentence as Tom Aspinall. Pavlovich’s last real title push stalled on back-to-back losses, and one of the men who beat him was Alexander Volkov.
That’s the fighter this piece is about. He tends to show up in other people’s stories more than his own.
Who he is
Volkov was born in 1988, which puts him somewhere around 38 as this fall card approaches. He’s Russian, he trains with Strela Team, and he fights under the nickname “Drago.” His record sits at 40-11.
Add those numbers up. That’s 51 professional fights, a figure that would be a lot for anyone, never mind a heavyweight, where every exchange carries more weight and every mistake costs more. I always look at the losses column on a record like that before I look at the wins. Eleven defeats means 11 times he had to go back to the gym, sit with the result, and decide to keep doing this. He kept deciding yes. The 40 wins are what happened because of that.
I’d love to give you the full origin story here, the first gym, the first coach, the town he left. The material on my desk doesn’t cover any of it, and I won’t make up a childhood for a man who has spent this long earning his own. What it does say is enough to sketch the outline: a Russian heavyweight with half a century of pro fights behind him, still ranked in the top five of the deepest-pocketed division in the sport, still getting booked.
The win that keeps echoing
The Pavlovich result is the one the sources keep returning to, and it’s easy to see why. Pavlovich has 16 career knockouts by Bloody Elbow’s count. MMA Mania called him one of the most frightening punchers in the division. Facing someone like that, your margin for error is about one bad step. Volkov beat him anyway.
What happened after says something about the quality of that win. Pavlovich didn’t fade. He rebuilt, outpointing Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Waldo Cortes-Acosta before the Teixeira demolition, and he’s now No. 2 in the Meta UFC heavyweight rankings, according to Bloody Elbow. Dana White announced during the UFC 332 broadcast in Salt Lake City that Pavlovich will face Pereira in a five-round co-main event on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The winner could find himself in line for the champion. Pereira, for what it’s worth, already posted an Instagram video of himself firing an arrow at Pavlovich, captioned “I’ll see you soon.”
So the man Volkov beat is now the betting favorite over a former two-division champion. The man who beat Volkov’s victim the other time, Aspinall, did it in an interim title fight. That’s the company this result keeps.
There’s a version of heavyweight coverage that only counts belts and highlight reels, and fighters like Volkov get lost in it. I find it more useful to look at who a fighter has beaten and what those people did next. By that measure, Volkov owns one of the more valuable wins in the division right now, and almost nobody is writing about it.
Where the division stands
The top of heavyweight has been loud this year. Ciryl Gane stopped Pereira in the second round at UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House in June to win the interim title. Pereira protested that he’d taken illegal strikes and talked about retiring over safety concerns, per MMA Junkie, before agreeing to the Pavlovich fight. Gane is scheduled to defend against Josh Hokit at UFC 334.
Volkov sits at No. 5 in Knockout Daily’s rankings, built from Cagefile data. His most recent fight was on May 9, 2026. Above him, the traffic is heavy: Gane and Hokit on one card, Pavlovich and Pereira on another, and the name Aspinall still hanging over everything. A fighter at No. 5 with a win over the No. 2 contender has a case. What he needs is a performance that makes people say it out loud.
What’s next
That chance comes quickly. Volkov is booked against Rizvan Kuniev at UFC 333 on Oct. 24, 2026, on the card headlined by Alexander Volkanovski and Movsar Evloev. A heavyweight fight on a featherweight-headlined event isn’t where contenders usually get much attention, and that suits the pattern of Volkov’s career so far.
Here’s my take. If Volkov handles Kuniev and Pavlovich beats Pereira in December, the sport will have a top contender coming off a win over a former two-division champion whose last loss before this run came against a 38-year-old Russian from Strela Team. Someone at the UFC will have to decide whether that matters. I think it should.
For now, the most useful thing about Volkov’s next fight is the date. It’s Oct. 24, seven weeks before Pavlovich and Pereira walk out in Las Vegas, which gives him time to make a case before the division’s biggest bet gets settled.
