At the press conference for UFC 333, the crowd booed Movsar Evloev, and the man it rattled was the champion sitting near him. Alexander Volkanovski admitted afterward that the jeers were meant to get into Evloev’s head but got into his own instead, because he felt bad for the guy. That’s a strange thing for a title holder to say three weeks before defending his belt against an undefeated contender. It’s also the most useful thing anyone has said about Evloev this month.
The least useful came from Demetrious Johnson. On a recent episode of the Precision Podcast, Mighty Mouse looked at Evloev’s record and couldn’t get past one column. “Well, something came into my mind, you say he’s undefeated, 20-0, no finishes, how the f is he still in the UFC?” Johnson said. He brought up Michael Page, the fighter known as MVP, whom the UFC just cut, and pointed out that Page at least did flashy things in there even when he wasn’t knocking anybody out. Then he circled back to Evloev’s stoppage count, or lack of one. “Not even a submission? Wow,” he said.
The numbers he’s reacting to are real. Evloev is 32, he’s 20-0, and all 10 of his UFC wins have gone to the scorecards. Nobody’s disputing that.
But look at who’s on the other side of those decisions. Lerone Murphy. Aljamain Sterling. Arnold Allen. Those are three of the better featherweights the division has produced recently, and Evloev beat every one of them without ever being the guy whose hand stayed down at the end. A man who goes 10-0 in the UFC against that kind of company has answered Johnson’s question already. He’s still in the UFC because he keeps beating the people the UFC puts in front of him, and he has never once given the matchmakers an excuse.
Johnson almost says this himself. Tucked into the middle of his rant is a concession he seems to wave past: “Movsar Evloev does know how to win.” That line carries more weight than everything around it. Winning is the job. Finishing is a bonus the promotion likes to pay for, and Evloev has made peace with not collecting it.
Where Johnson does have a point, it’s aimed at the wrong person. If the UFC is going to release MVP for being unexciting, and Johnson clearly thinks that’s the logic, then the promotion owes everyone an explanation for what its standard actually is. Is it finishes? Is it highlights? Is it ticket sales? Page and Evloev being measured against different rulers is a fair thing to poke at. Turning that inconsistency into a referendum on whether an unbeaten top contender deserves his roster spot is a different argument, and a weaker one.
And honestly, Evloev has already paid for his style. Volkanovski said as much when he defended him. “That’s why he’s had to take the long road to the title, he probably deserved it before now I almost feel bad for the guy,” the champion said. That’s the cost of fighting the way Evloev fights. He didn’t get cut. He got made to wait, and he won through the wait, fight after fight, until there was nobody left to put in his way except the champion himself.
Volkanovski would know better than most. He’s been calling for this fight for several years, which tells you how a featherweight who has seen everything in that division rates Evloev. The two also share a bit of history. Evloev recently said they trained together a few years back, when he was still competing at bantamweight. Volkanovski has brushed those sessions off as meaningless, which is fine. Champions aren’t obligated to hand challengers a storyline, and nobody should read too much into rounds from years ago in someone else’s gym.
I like Johnson’s honesty, and I get why a fighter wired for finishing finds a 10-fight run of decisions baffling. But a 20-0 record built on Murphy, Sterling and Allen doesn’t need defending. If anything, the booing at that press conference says more about what fans have been trained to cheer for than it says about Evloev. He’s spent his whole UFC career taking away the thing his opponents do best and leaving with the win. That’s a skill too, even if it never makes a highlight reel.
UFC 333 goes down October 24 in Abu Dhabi, with Volkanovski making the second defense of his second featherweight reign. If Evloev wins it the same way he’s won the other 10, he walks out 21-0 with the belt around his waist. Then Johnson can go back to the Precision Podcast and ask how a champion is still in the UFC.
