Alexander Volkov has spent years as the most polite frustrated man in the heavyweight division. This week the politeness stayed, and the frustration finally got a microphone.
Speaking to MMA Fighting ahead of UFC 333, the No. 2-ranked heavyweight went after the booking that has Ciryl Gane defending the undisputed title against Josh Hokit at UFC 334 on Nov. 14. He did it in that flat, deadpan Volkov delivery that somehow lands harder than a podium full of profanity. My take is simple. He’s right about the matchmaking, and he’s also running the sharpest title campaign in the division while claiming to want nothing to do with campaigning. Both of those things are true, and I’m loving every minute of it.
The math is ugly
Start with the resume, because the resume does most of the arguing for him. Volkov has won six of his last seven fights. The lone loss in that stretch was a split decision to Gane that plenty of people still consider controversial. Since that night, Gane has received two title shots, one against Tom Aspinall and one against Alex Pereira, and now he gets Hokit. Volkov, meanwhile, beat Waldo Cortes-Acosta, beat Jailton Almeida, and was rewarded with a trip to Abu Dhabi to fight Rizvan Kuniev, who sits below him in the rankings.
Then MMA Fighting dropped the stat that made me spit out my coffee. Hokit started fighting MMA when Volkov was already 11-4 in the UFC and 37-10 overall. Volkov had built an entire career, including a run as Bellator heavyweight champion, before Hokit had his first fight.
I’m the last guy who’s going to complain about a loud fighter. Give me the heel. Give me the guy who calls his shot and makes the press conference unwatchable for the PR department. But loud should earn you a big fight against a ranked name and a few million eyeballs. The title shot is supposed to come after you get past the guy sitting at No. 2, and Hokit hasn’t had to.
Volkov’s version of the belt
Volkov’s argument is sneakier than a simple gripe about rankings. He’s saying the belt takes on the personality of whoever holds it, and he wasn’t flattering about the current holder.
“But what means his belt right now? This is the question,” Volkov told MMA Fighting.
He answered it himself, describing the belt as belonging to “a champion who can eye poke somebody in a fight, kick a groin or do something else,” a clear shot at the fouls Gane committed in the UFC White House match. Then he turned to UFC 334: “Then he will fight with a with a guy who is just very loud right now, kind of showman. If he would take this belt, the meaning of the belt is that now you should be a showman to get the belt.”
That’s a vicious line delivered with the emotional temperature of a weather report. He also pointed back to the old K-1 days, when a tournament packed eight fighters into one day, as the kind of competition where the show existed but the fighting came first. Earlier this year he told the same outlet that Gane vs. Pereira for the interim title felt “more like a promotional or media fight” than a “true title fight.” He’s been consistent, and you have to give him that.
The Pereira piece makes the complaint worse. Pereira is 0-1 at heavyweight, and he faces Sergei Pavlovich in the co-main of UFC 335 on Dec. 12. A win there could put the former two-division champ back in line for a shot at a third UFC title. So the guy who lost his heavyweight debut might cut the line ahead of the guy who keeps winning. If you wanted a picture of a promotion treating the ranking system as a suggestion box, there it is.
The best promo nobody’s calling a promo
The funny part is that Volkov, who wants a champion who doesn’t “speak a lot,” just cut the best promo of fight week. “If I will have the belt, the belt will have meaning,” he said. That’s a T-shirt. That’s a walkout banner. Conor would have charged you $40 for that line.
He’s also clear-eyed about how the business works. He signed a new multi-fight deal that he described as very good, and he admitted that getting a title shot comes down to whether the person making the decision likes the fight. He made a fair point, too. As the No. 2 guy in the rankings, he wondered who could possibly be closer to the title than him. His read on the Kuniev booking was that it’s a fight made for the spectacle more than for the rankings.
He isn’t ducking anybody. He’s taking the fight he was given against a lower-ranked opponent and still talking about the belt, which is the exact opposite of the guys I can’t stand.
So here’s the test. Volkov fights Kuniev at UFC 333 on Saturday. Gane and Hokit go on Nov. 14. Pereira and Pavlovich go on Dec. 12. If Volkov wins clean in Abu Dhabi and the UFC still hands the next shot to whoever trended hardest in December, then he won’t need to say another word about what the belt means.
