Alexander Volkanovski could have taken the easy route this week. Champions hype their challengers all the time, because a scarier opponent makes a bigger win. He didn’t do that. He held Movsar Evloev up against Islam Makhachev, handed Makhachev the win in every column he named, and still made Evloev sound like a problem. I think that’s the sharpest read anyone has offered on UFC 333.
The comments came from an interview with Red Corner MMA, which Dovy Simu clipped and posted on X on Tuesday. Volkanovski was blunt about the comparison: “I look at Islam, and I think he’s going to have the better grappling, better wrestling, better striking.” He listed grappling and wrestling as separate categories, and he gave both to Makhachev, along with the striking. Then he turned the corner: “I look at Movsar and he’s going to be very unique in his own right.”
That second sentence is the one that matters.
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Why the Makhachev comparison misleads
When a challenger draws a comparison to Makhachev, the lightweight champion, the tempting shortcut is to treat him as a smaller, slightly less polished version. Same toolbox, lower grades. Prepare for the original and the copy takes care of itself.
Volkanovski’s answer throws that shortcut out. If Evloev were a lesser Makhachev, the champion would have stopped after the first sentence and called it a day. He kept going, and the word he chose was “unique.” Fighters don’t reach for that word to describe a cheaper version of someone else. They use it when a guy brings something that won’t show up on a category-by-category scorecard, the kind of problem you only understand once you’re standing across from it.
There’s also some respect for Makhachev buried in there. Volkanovski called Makhachev the better wrestler, the better grappler and the better striker, and he said it about a man he isn’t fighting next. He had nothing to gain by flattering Makhachev. That makes the second half of the quote easier to trust. A champion willing to give credit that freely probably isn’t inventing danger to sell tickets.
My take: this is exactly how a champion should talk five days out. Tape study on a comparable fighter only gets you so far. The camp that loses is the one that spends eight weeks preparing for a guy who never walks into the cage, and Volkanovski is telling us, out loud, that he knows Evloev isn’t Makhachev with the volume turned down.
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The market can’t separate them
If you think Volkanovski is overrating his challenger, the money disagrees. Championship Rounds posted on X Monday night that the fight was sitting at 50-50 on Polymarket. A sitting champion, defending his belt, priced as a coin flip.
That number says the same thing Volkanovski said, only in dollars. Nobody watching this fight thinks they’ve solved it. The challenger’s style won’t fit into a neat comparison, and the champion’s experience isn’t enough to tip the market. When the people with skin in the game can’t pick a side, you’d better have a plan for the version of the fight that goes sideways, and Volkanovski’s quote suggests he does.
What the camp looks like
If you want a peek at how seriously he’s taking it, check his own social feed. Championship Rounds shared a clip from Volkanovski’s account over the weekend in which one of his teammates passed out from exhaustion during a training challenge. Volkanovski’s reaction in the clip: “Did he pass out? F*ck man, that was an absolute war.”
I’m not going to pretend a gym challenge predicts a title fight. But it does tell you about the room he’s training in. Nobody pushes teammates to the point of collapse while preparing for a fight they consider routine. You do that when you expect the fourth and fifth rounds to be ugly, and against a challenger you’ve just called unique, ugly sounds about right.
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Saturday
UFC 333 goes down Saturday, Oct. 24, with Volkanovski and Evloev in the main event. In Brazil, it streams exclusively on Paramount+, where UFC Brasil has the pre-show at 10 a.m. Brasília time and the fights at 11 a.m. UFC Brasil is also pushing Daniel Santos, Iasmin Lucindo and Nicolle Caliari, so there’s a Brazilian thread running through the undercard worth tuning in early for.
Volkanovski gave away three categories to a man he isn’t even fighting and still sounded locked in on the guy he is. A champion who can scout that honestly and still respect his opponent is not one I’d bet against lightly, even at 50-50.
