Alexander Volkanovski has been in a gym with Movsar Evloev before, and with five days to go before they fight for the featherweight title at UFC 333, the champion is talking about it. The Independent and Yahoo Sports both reported Tuesday that Volkanovski addressed his past sparring sessions with the undefeated contender as he wraps up preparation for Saturday’s main event.
The reports carry the topic but not a detailed breakdown of what Volkanovski took from those rounds, so I won’t pretend to know exactly which exchanges stuck with him. What’s plain is the framing. These two aren’t strangers meeting under the lights for the first time. At some point they shared mats, and each walks into Saturday with a feel for the other that no amount of tape can fully give you.
UFC Brasil leaned into the same angle on X on Monday, writing that the champion had laid his cards on the table for the challenger and asking followers whether the main event would play out that way.
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The fight
UFC 333 goes Saturday, Oct. 24. UFC Brasil’s listing has the prelims starting at 10 a.m. Brasília time, with the main card fights at 11 a.m., and the promotion’s posts are tagged for Abu Dhabi. Daniel Santos, Iasmin Lucindo and Nicolle Caliari are the Brazilians on the card.
The betting crowd can’t separate them. Championship Rounds pointed out on X on Tuesday that the fight was sitting at 50-50 on Polymarket, which is about as honest a reading of this matchup as you’ll find.
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Evloev, unbeaten and still looking for his first UFC finish, told MMA Fighting’s Jose Youngs that taking the belt matters more to him than getting that stoppage on his record. “My whole republic, my whole country, are waiting for me to bring that title,” he said. “So for me, all of this is more important than just my ego.”
That’s a fighter telling you he’ll take a decision and sleep fine. For a wrestler whose whole UFC run has been built on control, it’s also a fair preview of how he plans to spend 25 minutes.
Volkanovski’s camp, meanwhile, sounds like it’s been running hot. In a clip he shared, flagged by Championship Rounds, one of his teammates went down from exhaustion during a training challenge. “Did he pass out? F*ck man, that was an absolute war,” Volkanovski said in the video. That’s the kind of room that produces a champion who can still push a pace in the championship rounds, and it’s the kind of room Evloev will have to drag down to the canvas over and over.
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Quick take
Old sparring sessions get overrated in fight week, because gym rounds aren’t fights and both men have changed since. But in a matchup this tight, any small read counts. Volkanovski has always been a fighter who solves people in real time, adjusting between rounds better than almost anyone at 145. If he’s already seen how Evloev sets up his entries and how he holds position once he’s there, that shortens the problem. Evloev’s own words tell you he’s coming to grind, not to gamble. I lean Volkanovski by decision, and I expect the first takedown attempt to tell us a lot about whether that gym history was worth anything at all.
