Diego Lopes has a main event of his own to worry about. He headlines UFC 335 against Charles Oliveira for the BMF title on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. He still found time this week to call the featherweight fight his whole division will be watching first, former champ Alexander Volkanovski against Movsar Evloev at UFC 333.
MMA Junkie posted the pick Friday morning on X, crediting @MMAJunkieGeorge and @thegoze, and Yahoo Sports and Heavy ran it within hours. MMA Sucka billed Lopes as a former opponent in its headline, which is the best reason to care what he thinks. A featherweight who has actually stood in there knows things about grip strength and pace that tape can’t show you. The written versions that reached me carry the headline and not the reasoning, so I’m leaving his exact breakdown to the video rather than inventing one. What I can do is tell you where this fight gets decided, and why I land on Volkanovski.
The problem has a name
Aaron Pico put it cleanly in a clip Full Mount MMA posted on Oct. 6. “Movsar can take him down, but the problem is holding him down,” Pico said. He pointed to Volkanovski’s history at lightweight as evidence: “He fought Islam Makhachev and Islam had hard time holding him down.”
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That second sentence is the most useful thing anyone has said about this matchup, because it separates two skills that casual viewers lump together. The takedown is the entry. The ride is the business. A wrestler wins rounds by what happens in the 30 seconds after the hips hit the canvas: whether he can pin a wrist, settle his weight, and stop the bottom man from walking his back up the fence. If Evloev finishes a shot early in Round 1 and Volkanovski is standing again before the commentators finish describing the entry, Evloev has spent a lot of gas buying one line on a scorecard.
And that line is a coin flip in the wrong hands. I’ve watched judges hand a round to a fighter for a takedown that lasted four seconds, and I’ve watched them ignore two minutes of heavy top control because nobody threw a punch. Evloev can’t afford to put himself at the mercy of that panel. He needs rides long enough that even a distracted judge notices.
This is also why the people who yell lay and pray at every grappling exchange are going to miss the best part of this fight. The stand-up battle along the cage, with Volkanovski fighting hands and Evloev trying to keep a chest-to-back connection, is where the result will actually be written.
Why the knockout talk is the tell
Pico went further than the ride problem. Full Mount framed his take as Evloev needing a knockout to beat Volkanovski. Coming from a wrestler, that’s a heavy admission. When someone with Pico’s background looks at a wrestler’s matchup and decides the wrestling alone won’t get it done, he’s telling you the plan A is compromised before the cage door closes.
A knockout path for Evloev exists, because every featherweight can crack. But asking a grappler to win the fight in his secondary weapon against a man who has spent years at the top of this division is a narrow road. Evloev’s best striking moments would likely come off the threat of the shot, feinting level changes to freeze Volkanovski and then throwing over the top. That works only if the takedown threat is scary enough to respect. If Volkanovski stops respecting it because he keeps getting up, the feints die and so does the counter.
The Midnight Mania roundup made the cleanest version of the case for Volkanovski: “Unless Volkanovski has lost a serious step, he feels like a brutal matchup for Movsar Evloev.” I’ll sign that sentence, caveat included. The caveat is the entire bet. If the step is gone, Evloev’s takedowns stick a beat longer, the rides get longer, and the scorecards turn green for him. If it’s there, Evloev spends 15 minutes or more paying full price for takedowns that refund him almost nothing.
My pick
Volkanovski by decision. I expect Evloev to land takedowns, probably more than one in the opening round, and I expect a nervous stretch where Evloev’s corner thinks the plan is working. Then the rides shorten. The fighter who adjusts between rounds is the one who figures out that the takedown count matters less than the clock on the mat, and I trust Volkanovski to win that clock.
Watch the first time Evloev gets him down. Count how long Volkanovski stays there. If it’s under 15 seconds, you already have your winner.
Lopes, meanwhile, gets his own answers on Dec. 12, across the cage from Charles Oliveira with the BMF belt on the line.
