Michael Bisping sat down to break down UFC 333 on his YouTube channel this week, and somewhere between gushing over Alexander Volkanovski’s TKO of Movsar Evloev in Abu Dhabi and moving on to the rest of the card, he invented a verb.
Here’s the line, from a clip Dovy (@DovySimuMMA) posted to X on Oct. 28. “He’s a fighter’s fighter,” Bisping said of Volkanovski. “He steps up. He stays busy. He’s not one of these guys doing an Islam, fighting once a year and then picking and choosing who he fights and letting contenders face one another.”
That’s a great soundbite. Bisping did call the comparison between the two tough to make, and he gave Volkanovski the edge in one specific category, activity. On that narrow point he has a case. On the bigger question, the pound-for-pound one his clip is being dragged into, two fights in 2023 already settled it, and no amount of staying busy changes the scoreboard.
Volkanovski earned the compliment
Start with what Bisping gets right, because it’s a lot. Volkanovski won the vacant featherweight title against Diego Lopes at UFC 314 in Miami on April 12, 2025, after Ilia Topuria moved up to lightweight. That was his only fight of 2025. Then 2026 happened. According to Yahoo Sports, which syndicated Sports Illustrated’s coverage, he beat Lopes again in late January, then turned around about nine months later and finished Evloev, a man who walked into the cage with a 20-fight unbeaten run in MMA. Twenty fights without a loss, and Volkanovski is the one who ended it.
This is also a guy with a history of saying yes. The same coverage points to his quick turnaround against Topuria, a fight that cost him the belt. And his second fight with Makhachev, at UFC 294 in October 2023, came on short notice. I love a fighter who answers the phone. Volkanovski answers it every time, sometimes to his own detriment, and that’s exactly why Bisping’s “fighter’s fighter” tag fits him.
You can also see why Bisping cares so much about this. He won The Ultimate Fighter, became a champion, and was never treated like a sure thing along the way. He had to earn every opportunity, so a guy who keeps showing up is going to get his vote.
Where the math slips
The “once a year” part is where it gets shaky. Makhachev fought twice in 2025. He closed out his lightweight run at UFC 311 in Inglewood, California, then moved up and took the welterweight title from then-champion Jack Della Maddalena at UFC 322 in November. Two fights in one calendar year, and the second was against the reigning champion of a heavier division. Calling that picking and choosing is a stretch. You don’t cherry-pick by walking up 15 pounds to fight the guy holding the belt.
Bisping’s line about champions letting contenders fight each other is a legitimate gripe in general. Title holders sitting still while the division stacks up behind them is one of the least fun things in this sport. But it’s a complaint about the calendar, and calendars don’t win fights.
Two fights, two answers
The head-to-head is the whole ballgame here. Makhachev beat Volkanovski for the lightweight title at UFC 284 in Perth on Feb. 12, 2023, in Volkanovski’s home country. Eight months later at UFC 294, Makhachev beat him again, this time by TKO.
Volkanovski deserves real credit for taking that second fight on short notice. It was brave, and nobody should hold the result against his toughness. It still counts, though. When two fighters at the top of every pound-for-pound list have fought twice and one guy won both, activity is a tiebreaker for a tie that doesn’t exist.
Where Volkanovski’s busy schedule does matter is the featherweight conversation, which is his real legacy fight anyway. The SI piece lays out the three camps: Volkanovski, Conor McGregor (whose crossover profile grew after he boxed Floyd Mayweather Jr. in August 2017), and Jose Aldo, whose 10-year unbeaten run is the argument his supporters lead with. Ending Evloev’s streak and beating Lopes twice is the kind of stacking that helps Volkanovski in that debate. It does nothing to erase Perth or Abu Dhabi in 2023.
My take? Bisping is right about who’s more fun to follow. I’d rather have Volkanovski’s schedule on my calendar than almost anyone’s. But fun and better are different arguments, and the only one with fight results attached belongs to Makhachev.
Volkanovski has already teased a champ-vs-champ fight after UFC 333 and a Topuria rematch before he retires, per SI’s headlines. If he wants to move the pound-for-pound needle, the Topuria rematch is the one that would actually do it, because beating the man who took his belt would be a statement the scoreboard has to respect.
