Alexander Volkanovski says he’ll be the “leanest and lightest” he’s ever been when he defends the UFC featherweight title against Movsar Evloev at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 24. The comments were clipped and posted on X by Dovy (@DovySimuMMA), and the champion didn’t dress up the reason.
“It’s just the weight cut, I’m 38 years old. We just want to make sure the weight cut goes well and recover the best we can,” Volkanovski said.
That’s a 145-pound champion talking about the scale before he talks about the guy across from him, and I appreciate the honesty. The National framed his return to the desert around how much he’s changed, running a feature headlined with his own line: “I’m Alex, who still fights.”
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Where the division sits
Evloev comes in as the No. 1 featherweight in the UFC Meta Rankings, which were updated after UFC 332 in Salt Lake City. Diego Lopes sits at No. 2, followed by Lerone Murphy and Aljamain Sterling. Lopes, who shared the cage with Volkanovski at UFC 314, is headed up to lightweight to fight Charles Oliveira for the BMF title at UFC 335 on Dec. 12 at T-Mobile Arena. So the challenger lane at 145 is about as uncluttered as it gets. It’s Evloev, and that’s it.
There’s a wrinkle to this one that Uncrowned’s October pound-for-pound panel flagged. The loudest voice campaigning for Evloev to get a title shot belonged to Volkanovski himself. The champion now gets the fight he asked for.
Volkanovski held at No. 3 on that pound-for-pound list, behind welterweight champion Islam Makhachev and bantamweight champion Petr Yan. The panel was split on him, which is more interesting than the final number. Ben Fowlkes and Petesy Carroll both had him second, while Eric Jackman dropped him all the way to seventh.
He won’t be the only title story in Abu Dhabi, either. Yan defends the bantamweight belt against Merab Dvalishvili on the same card, completing a trilogy after Yan took the title at UFC 323. Dvalishvili had been defending it for a fourth time in 2025 when he lost it.
Sal’s take
I’ve lost enough money on aging champions to know the age number on its own tells you very little. What tells you something is a 38-year-old who builds an entire camp around the cut and the recovery, because the cut is where old legs get stolen. Fighters who drain badly walk in flat. Fighters who make weight easily get to keep their cardio for the championship rounds, and five-round title fights get decided in those rounds more often than the highlight reels admit. A leaner Volkanovski carrying less to shed is the right call. He also volunteered to fight the top-ranked guy in the division, so give him credit for that. I’ll want to see where the betting line lands once fight week starts, but the first real data point comes on the scale in Abu Dhabi, and the belt is on the line Oct. 24.
