Alexander Volkov didn’t get a seat on the UFC 333 press conference stage, so he walked in the front door like everybody else.
The heavyweight contender told Ariel Helwani, who posted the comments on X on Wednesday, that he noticed the promotion had left him off the presser lineup “again, the same as the last three fights.” He said he doesn’t know why. His fix was simple. He “went through the regular gates like a regular fan,” because he had some questions for the fighters and for Dana White.
By Volkov’s telling, the UFC boss had no clue one of his heavyweights was standing in the crowd.
View post on X
“Of course he didn’t recognize me,” Volkov said. “I’m not even sure he can remember my name, and I bet every time he hears my name, he thinks they’re talking about Alexander Volkanovski.”
That’s a good line. The part after it is the one the UFC should hear. Volkov said White still had no answer for him, and he laid the question out plainly: “What am I supposed to do to get a title fight? And they don’t have an answer.”
In a second clip Helwani posted 10 minutes later, Volkov sounded like a man who has stopped waiting by the phone. He said he’s done chasing the heavyweight title.
“I’m not hunting for this title and the belt. This belt doesn’t define me. I’m still a champion by myself,” he said. “I understand who I am, where I am, what I can do, which guys I can beat.”
His view is that whoever holds the strap decides what it’s worth. In his words, “The fighter who has the belt defines what the belt means.” He said the title should belong to someone who has proved his record and can beat everyone, and then he took a swipe at an unnamed type of fighter: “Not just somebody who breaks the rules every fight or tries to injure his opponents.”
View post on X
Volkov didn’t put a name on that shot, and neither post from Helwani does either. He went on to describe himself as a clean fighter in every sense. “I don’t use any drugs. I’ve been a clean athlete all my life,” he said, before calling himself a martial artist first and foremost and adding that he believes he’s “still the best in the game.”
He closed the thought by flipping the usual title math around. “If I have the belt, the fact that I’m a champion defines the belt and its value, not the opposite.”
Neither post mentions a next opponent, a booking or a date for Volkov. By his own count, he has now been left off the stage at four straight press conferences, and the only way he got into the most recent one was through the fan entrance.
My take: I love a fighter who answers a question straight, and Volkov asked one straighter than most media members manage on fight week. A heavyweight contender shouldn’t have to come through the turnstiles to ask the promoter what the path to a title looks like. If White really can’t keep his Alexanders straight, the easiest way to fix that is to put Volkov’s name on a fight poster.
