Movsar Evloev has spent fight week doing the media rounds ahead of his UFC 333 title shot against Alexander Volkanovski, and two of his answers have traveled further than anything he said about the actual fight. Asked which UFC fighter he would least want to be stranded on an island with, Evloev picked Alexa Grasso, according to a clip shared Thursday by Championship Rounds on X. The clip doesn’t come with an explanation, and none of the coverage offers one.
The better story came a day later. In comments translated and shared by @AdamZubayraev and reposted by Championship Rounds, Evloev explained that his sit-down with content creator Nina Drama was never something he wanted to do. Rather than turn her down flat, he attached a condition he assumed would end the conversation.
“Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about that interview. I wanted to turn it down, so I just set a condition I thought she would refuse,” Evloev said. “I said, ‘if she wears a hijab, I’ll agree’ so I wouldn’t just refuse outright. She agreed, so then I had to sit there and do the interview.”
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Drama showed up covered, and the footage, posted via @WillHarrisAOAF, opens with a short exchange that reads differently now that you know the backstory. “Wait, can I look at you?” she asks. “Yea of course. I can’t look at you if you weren’t wearing this,” Evloev answers.
All of this is happening around the biggest fight of his career. Evloev and Volkanovski both made weight for the UFC 333 main event, with Volkanovski at 144.5 pounds and Evloev right on 145. At the UFC Open Workouts, Evloev promised more than a decision. “Title, Finish. We’ll take it all,” he said, per a clip shared by @DovySimuMMA.
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The betting market sees a real fight. Championship Rounds noted that Evloev sat at a 46% chance on Polymarket to win the featherweight title. A win would make him only the sixth featherweight champion in UFC history, after José Aldo, Conor McGregor, Max Holloway, Volkanovski and Ilia Topuria. That’s a short, heavy list.
He also hasn’t let the hype run ahead of him. When a crowd started chanting his name while Volkanovski was answering a question during fight week, Evloev told them to stop and “respect the champ,” according to another Championship Rounds clip.
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My take: the hijab story will get flattened into a meme by Sunday, and that would miss what’s actually funny and kind of endearing about it. Evloev tried to decline an interview politely, the way plenty of people decline invitations, by naming a price he figured nobody would pay. Drama paid it without blinking, and he kept his word and sat down. That tells you a fair amount about a guy who also shushed his own fans so a champion could finish a sentence. He’d clearly rather be in the cage than on a couch with a microphone, and on Saturday night against Volkanovski, the cage is the only interview that counts.
