Dana White wants everyone to know he recognized Alexander Volkov. He says he was in on a bit that, it turns out, wasn’t a bit at all.
The UFC CEO took heat this week after the UFC 333 pre-fight press conference in Abu Dhabi, where footage showed him looking puzzled while Volkov, a Top 5 heavyweight fighting on Saturday’s main card, stood in the crowd asking questions about title shots. Clips spread fast. The verdict online was simple: the boss didn’t know who the 6-foot-something Russian was.
White told Main Event that the verdict was wrong. MMA Mania’s Jesse Holland picked up the comments, which came with a pretty specific witness list.
“I absolutely knew,” White said. “It was freaking Volkanovski out so bad,” he added, explaining that “he asked me twice.”
According to White, Volkanovski leaned over and checked whether he realized the man asking questions was Volkov. White said he told him yes. His read in the moment was that Volkov was running some kind of comedy routine and would eventually drop a punchline.
“I thought [Volkov] was doing some type of a shtick and I was waiting for the punchline … there was nothing,” White said. “It was very odd. Even my staff thought I didn’t know.”
So the official story is this. Volkov played it straight, White played it straight back while waiting for a laugh line, and the result was two grown men staring at each other in a room full of cameras. Nobody blinked. That’s the sort of moment that makes fight week worth covering.
The title picture
The more useful part of the interview came after the denial. White addressed the substance of what Volkov was asking about, which was where he stands in line for heavyweight gold.
“He’s in (the mix),” White said. “It’s not like he has to do anything to come close to the title shot. He’s in it right now, everything you said is dead on, and he’ll get his shot.”
White framed Volkov’s frustration as a scheduling problem. “Sometimes people get in these weird positions where they feel like they’re in no man’s land, but it’s just a timing issue,” he said.
That’s a notable thing for a promoter to say on the record two days before a fight, because it gives Volkov something to point at later. Volkov meets No. 5-ranked Rizvan Kuniev on Saturday, Oct. 24, at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi.
My take: I’ll give White the benefit of the doubt on the recognition, mostly because his version is too weird to make up. The bigger story is that Volkov stood up at a press conference and asked his own boss, publicly and with a straight face, when he gets his shot. I love that. Fighters asking direct questions is rare, and fighters who ask them without a wink are rarer. White has now said on camera that Volkov is in the mix and will get his shot. If Volkov gets past Kuniev on Saturday, the timing issue White mentioned becomes his problem to solve.
