Alexander Volkov spent fight week in Abu Dhabi doing something heavyweights with 41 professional wins usually don’t have to do. He campaigned. He gave sharp quotes in interviews, and at the UFC 333 pre-fight press conference he walked up to Dana White with questions of his own. Then on Saturday he beat Rizvan Kuniev by unanimous decision, and by Sunday Daniel Cormier was on his YouTube channel making Volkov’s case for him.
“Volkov got a big victory,” Cormier said. “I thought Volkov cemented himself as the No. 1 contender as long as Tom Aspinall is not right back after the title fight in November. Or unless Alex Pereira has an insane knockout of Sergei Pavlovich (at UFC 335).”
Cormier has the first sentence exactly right. I think he’s too polite with the second and third.
Twenty fights and no title shot
Lay the record out flat and it gets hard to argue with. Volkov is 41-11 overall and 15-5 in the UFC. The Kuniev win makes seven victories in his last eight fights. The one loss in that stretch came against Ciryl Gane at UFC 310 in December 2024, a split decision that drew heavy controversy at the time and still reads like a coin flip that landed on its edge. Across 20 octagon appearances, Volkov has never once been the challenger for the belt.
Twenty appearances. That number deserves to sit by itself for a second, because heavyweight is the division where a couple of highlight knockouts can turn a prospect into a main eventer before he’s had to sit through a bad round. Volkov has done it the long way, fight by fight, card by card, and he has kept winning after most of the people he came up alongside stopped showing up on the rankings page.
Compare that to the man who did get the call. Josh Hokit is 10-0 and 4-0 in the UFC, and he fights Gane (14-2, 11-2 with one no contest in the UFC) for the heavyweight title at UFC 334 on Nov. 14. I’m not going to pretend an unbeaten record is nothing. But four UFC fights against Volkov’s 15 UFC wins is a gap, and a lot of people looked at the booking and figured Volkov should have been the one standing across from Gane in November. Pushing a title shot onto someone after four promotional wins while a veteran with seven wins in eight waits outside is the kind of matchmaking that makes the rankings feel decorative.
Weighing Cormier’s two exceptions
Cormier didn’t oversell the Kuniev fight, which I appreciated. “Hey, a finish would’ve been better,” he said. “But he was more aggressive tonight and he fought better.” That’s an honest read. Kuniev came in 15-4-1 and 2-2 in the UFC, and a decision over him won’t headline anybody’s highlight reel. It still counts as a win against a ranked-caliber heavyweight on a numbered card, and Volkov came forward more than he has in some of his more patient performances.
The Aspinall exception is the one I’ll accept without arguing. Aspinall vacated the belt this year because of lingering problems with his eyes, which means he gave it up instead of losing it in a fight. If doctors clear him, a former champion who was never beaten for the title belongs at the front of the line, and Cormier said as much. Nobody, Volkov included, can reasonably complain about that.
The Pereira exception is where I get off the bus. Pereira faces Pavlovich at UFC 335 on Dec. 12, and Cormier openly admitted the pull of Pereira’s star power if he wins. I understand the business logic. A big name with a big knockout sells a pay-per-view in a way a methodical Russian veteran might not. But one heavyweight win, however violent, measured against seven wins in eight fights is a hype train with a single car. If the UFC hands Pereira the shot off one result while Volkov sits at 15-5 in the promotion with zero title fights, the message to every grinder on the roster is that the work matters less than the clip.
Cormier’s cleaner line is the one he delivered almost as an aside. “I believe that Volkov reintroduced himself to a title opportunity,” he said. Reintroduced is the right word. Volkov has been in the conversation before, drifted out of it and walked himself back in with wins, a decision at a time, plus a few pointed questions at a press conference table.
The order of operations is set now. Gane and Hokit fight for the belt on Nov. 14. Pereira and Pavlovich meet on Dec. 12. Aspinall waits on his eyes. If Gane keeps the title, the obvious next fight is a rematch of that UFC 310 split decision, and Volkov would finally get to settle it with a belt on the table.
