Alexander Volkanovski isn’t easing into fight week. “I am a nightmare matchup for him,” the UFC featherweight champion said in a video UFC News posted to X on Wednesday. In it he explained why he believes he’ll be the first fighter to beat the undefeated Movsar Evloev, and what doing so would mean for his legacy. They meet Saturday, October 24, at UFC 333.
The card streams on Paramount Plus, and the UFC’s promotional posts are stamped with #InAbuDhabi branding. UFC Brasil listed the pre-show at 10 a.m. Brasília time with the fights starting at 11 a.m., a breakfast-hour start for South American viewers. Brazilians Daniel Santos, Iasmin Lucindo and Nicolle Caliari are also on the lineup.
The betting crowd hasn’t bought the champ’s confidence yet, and it hasn’t sold it either. Championship Rounds pointed out earlier this week that the fight sat at 50-50 on Polymarket. That’s a remarkable number for a matchup between a sitting champion and a challenger getting his first crack at the belt. Usually somebody gets the respect. Here nobody does.
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Evloev also got some unflattering attention from a former featherweight king. Jose Aldo told MMA Fighting that if he ran the UFC, he’d wait for Evloev’s first loss and then release him. “I’d wait for him to lose for the first time and then cut him because he’s a guy who doesn’t sell, a guy who puts on boring fights, a guy who doesn’t draw attention,” Aldo said. Volkanovski would love to make the first half of that wish come true on Saturday.
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The champion’s camp has had its own entertainment. Volkanovski shared a moment from one of his team’s training challenges in which a teammate passed out from exhaustion. “Did he pass out? F*ck man, that was an absolute war,” he said, in a clip Championship Rounds circulated. He’s also planning ahead. Spinnin Backfist reported that he’ll head to Dagestan soon to film an episode of Cooking With Volk alongside Islam Makhachev. “We want to do a whole hunting on horseback, catch stuff, cook over a fire....you can just imagine how good that content will be,” Volkanovski said. A champ booking cooking content in Dagestan before he’s even made the walk is either supreme confidence or a guy who knows the post-fight schedule is going to be busy either way.
My take: every champion calls himself a nightmare matchup in fight week. It costs nothing and it plays well in a highlight package. What interests me is the price. When a market prices a title fight at a dead coin flip, it’s telling you the public can’t separate the champion’s experience from the challenger’s spotless record, and that’s exactly where I go looking for value. I’m not telling you which side to take. I am telling you that at even money, you’re betting on one specific question: can Volkanovski force Evloev into the kind of fight Aldo says he never has? If the answer is yes, the champ is the play. If Evloev drags it into his rhythm, Aldo is going to have to keep waiting. We find out Saturday morning, Brasília time.
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