Robert Whittaker has heard enough debate about what Alexander Volkanovski should do next, and his answer fits in one sentence. Give the man the fight.
In comments Ariel Helwani shared on X on Monday, Whittaker made the case for Volk getting another crack at becoming a two-division UFC champion, and he named the opponents too. “Let him fight Gaethje or Arman,” Whittaker said. “The guy’s cleaned out the division like twice. He’s fought everyone and their friend.”
That everyone-and-their-friend line is my favorite of the week, and it’s also a pretty good argument. Whittaker is right, and the UFC should listen.
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The merit case
People make the job of a dominant champion sound like a reward. It’s mostly a chore. You beat the top guy, then the next guy, then the guy the matchmakers dug up because everyone else already lost to you. Whittaker’s claim is that Volkanovski has gone through that cycle twice. If that’s true, the honest question for the UFC is what’s left to prove by keeping him home. Another title defense against a contender nobody is begging to see? That’s how you end up with a champion grinding out safe fights in front of a crowd checking their phones, and I have zero patience for that version of the sport.
Volk is asking for the opposite. He wants the harder room. A fighter who has run out of challenges at his own weight and goes looking for a bigger one should get rewarded for that. Ducking is a crime in this sport. Chasing should be encouraged.
This would be another shot at the second belt, and Whittaker framed the double-gold dream as something Volk has been chasing for a long time. So we already know he’s tried, and we already know he wants it badly enough to keep coming back. I’ll take a fighter who keeps knocking on that door over one who’s happy to cash checks against hand-picked opponents.
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The money case
Whittaker’s second point is the one the UFC brass will actually care about. “He deserves it. Plus, people will tune in,” he said. “People want to see these sorts of fights.”
He’s right about that, too. I spend a lot of my time yelling about promotions treating fans like ATMs, stuffing cards with filler and charging premium prices for it. This is the rare case where the expensive thing and the thing fans actually want are the same fight. A champ-champ chase is easy to sell. Nobody needs a 20-minute hype package to explain why a guy jumping up to grab a second belt matters.
Whittaker pitched it as a huge money fight, and either of his suggested opponents fits that description. Justin Gaethje’s name, for one, is apparently famous enough to make a presidential wish list. On Saturday, President Trump announced he had offered Dana White the job of White House press secretary and asked him to bring along a crew of assistants that included Gaethje, Islam Makhachev, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Daniel Cormier and Amanda Nunes, according to the statement Aaron Rupar posted on X. Trump described White as “a violent Fighter and Warrior,” which is a sentence I never expected to read on a Saturday afternoon. Whether Dana takes the gig is anyone’s guess. If he does, at least the Volk fight could get booked from the briefing room podium.
Gaethje or Arman
Whittaker named both and didn’t pick, so I will. If the goal is the biggest spectacle, Gaethje is the easy call because the name already sells itself. If the goal is legitimacy, Arman Tsarukyan is the one that settles the argument, because nobody can claim Volk took the soft road if he goes through him. Personally, I’d book Arman. The double-gold chase means the most when it’s brutally hard, and the critics lose their best talking point the second Volk accepts the toughest version of the fight.
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Any lightweight who has been grinding up the ladder gets to be annoyed by this, and fairly so. A featherweight jumping the line will always irritate the guys stuck waiting. But the UFC has never been a pure meritocracy, and it shouldn’t pretend to be one when a fight this good is sitting on the table. Contenders get their turn. Generational chances to make a champ-champ don’t come around every year.
Whittaker finished with the cleanest version of the pitch. “Give him a chance at that double-gold status he’s been hunting for so long,” he said. Book Volk against Arman, put it on a card that needs a headliner, and let the guy who has fought everyone and their friend go fight someone new.
