Alexander Volkanovski has apparently found time, in the final week before defending his featherweight title, to tell everyone who deserves to fight for it next. MMA Sucka ran the headline Sunday saying Volkanovski identified the division’s deserving title contenders. Fine. Let the champ hold court. I’d only point out that the most deserving contender at 145 is the man he fights Saturday in Abu Dhabi, and that man has waited longer than I have for a teaser I placed in 2019 to cash.
Movsar Evloev is 20-0. He’s 10-0 in the UFC since his 2019 debut. His last four wins came against Lerone Murphy, Aljamain Sterling, Arnold Allen and Diego Lopes. Now the stat that tells you how “deserving” actually works in this division: Lopes, who lost to Evloev, went on to leapfrog him and fight Volkanovski in two title fights before Evloev got one. Two. The guy holding the L got two cracks while the guy holding the W sat in the waiting room reading old magazines.
So when the champion starts sorting out who has earned a shot, I’d like to see the rubric.
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The price of a zero in the finish column
Evloev has no knockouts and no submissions in the Octagon. Ten wins, all on the cards, which means he’s banked at least 30 rounds of UFC work without once letting a judge go home early. He told MMA Fighting’s José Youngs that his style probably slowed his climb: “Maybe my fighting style [made it take longer than I expected], but still the most important thing is still winning the fight.”
That’s a reasonable thing to believe. It’s also a belief the UFC has spent 2026 testing. Bloody Elbow laid out the body count: Farid Basharat, a top-10 bantamweight who won all seven of his UFC fights, wasn’t re-signed. Daniel Marcos got removed at 18-1. Michael Venom Page left at 5-1 in the Octagon. Meanwhile the Contender Series just handed out 46 contracts, tying its record, so the roster has plenty of cheap, eager bodies to replace anybody who wins boringly. Demetrious Johnson, per that same report, questioned how Evloev has even survived.
Evloev has a theory about that. “I have zero finishes in the UFC, but I’m still in UFC and I’m fighting for the title, so that means that not just finishes is important,” he said.
I admire the optimism. I’d also bet he’s the exception and the exception proves how narrow the door is.
Two lanes to a belt
Across town, so to speak, you’ve got Alex Pereira. Henry Cejudo went after him on his Pound 4 Pound podcast this week, and the receipts back Cejudo up. Pereira got a light heavyweight title shot after one fight in the division, a split decision over Jan Blachowicz. He got an interim heavyweight shot at the White House without a single heavyweight fight on his record. “You’ve skipped the line long enough, bro,” Cejudo said.
That’s lane one: be a knockout artist with a kickboxing rivalry already baked in, and the line bends around you. Lane two is Evloev’s lane, which runs through 10 ranked-and-unranked opponents and seven years of calendar. Any honest list of deserving featherweights has to admit the UFC has historically cared which lane you’re in more than how many people you beat.
The champ has his own exit in view
Here’s my grumpy note on the guy doing the grading. Volkanovski, a two-time champion, has also been pitching a retirement superfight against Justin Gaethje for lightweight gold, according to a Lastwordonsports headline. I’m not going to pretend I know his full plan from a headline. But a champion with one eye on a 155-pound farewell isn’t the most neutral judge of who should line up at 145 after him.
He’s also been needling Evloev directly, saying the challenger’s wrestling won’t be enough and that he’ll eventually have to throw down. Evloev’s response, via MMA Junkie: “I was looking for finish. But when I hear that kind of talk, I don’t want to finish. I want to prove that he’s not special.”
That’s the most dangerous sentence of fight week, and it’s coming from the quiet guy. He followed it with the actual game plan to MMA Fighting. If a knockout comes, he said, it’ll come off the wrestling, because the wrestling is what will make Volkanovski tired.
I love a fighter whose path to victory is making the other guy’s lungs file a complaint. Evloev has never needed a highlight to win. He’s needed time, and 10 fights in, nobody has taken it away from him.
Volkanovski can rank the contenders all he wants. If Evloev’s hand goes up Saturday at UFC 333, that list gets handed to a 21-0 champion who has never been in a hurry about anything.
