Alexander Volkanovski named his price for retirement after UFC 333, and Dana White didn’t wave him off. At the post-fight press conference, the UFC CEO said the featherweight champion has piled up enough credit that the promotion isn’t inclined to deny him much. That includes another run at 155 pounds against lightweight champion Justin Gaethje.
White framed it around Volkanovski’s résumé. Given everything he’s accomplished, White said, there isn’t much the UFC is going to turn him down on, and the company will see how the whole situation plays out from here.
Nothing is signed. Still, that’s a soft yes by White’s standards, and it came minutes after he described Volkanovski as “built different.”
The night that earned the ask
Volkanovski handed Movsar Evloev his first loss, stopping the previously undefeated top contender by TKO in the second round. That was the second defense of Volkanovski’s second reign at 145. Evloev came in with a perfect record and real momentum as the division’s next man up. He left with a loss to a guy who has dropped exactly one featherweight fight across a 14-year career.
The Gaethje idea wasn’t a post-fight brainstorm, either. Volkanovski floated the super fight before UFC 333 and again after he got his hand raised. He wants it.
The lightweight problem
Volkanovski has already fought for the 155-pound belt twice. He lost to Islam Makhachev both times. Plenty of champions would treat that as the end of the lightweight conversation. Volkanovski is 38, though, and he’s thinking about how he wants the last stretch of his career to read. Gaethje holds the lightweight belt now, and he presents a very different puzzle than Makhachev did.
Volkanovski made his offer clean at the presser, saying a Gaethje title fight is something he would retire for. “So if they wanted to give me that opportunity, I would retire.” He was clear it holds regardless of the result, and that he’d be walking away from 145 as well, with the featherweight title going vacant so he isn’t holding the division up.
If the fight doesn’t happen, Volkanovski said he’ll keep approaching each fight as it comes.
Jules’ take
Give it to him. I know the two Makhachev losses are sitting right there, and I don’t care. The man just put a zero on the record of the most dangerous contender at featherweight. He’s offering the UFC a deal where the 145 belt frees up the moment he walks to the cage at lightweight, so nobody in the division gets stuck waiting. A champion offering his own exit as the bargaining chip is about as generous as this business gets. Gaethje against a featherweight great with nothing left to protect is a fight I’d stay up for at 4 a.m. White said there’s not much he’d say no to. This is the test of that sentence.
