Alexander Volkanovski isn’t packing up the locker yet. Ahead of his UFC 333 title defense against Movsar Evloev, the two-time featherweight champion addressed the retirement chatter that has followed him for a while now, and according to a Sportskeeda report, his message was blunt: “Don’t be surprised if I’m here for another 3 fights.”
That’s a long runway to sketch out when the next fight is the one most people have circled as the toughest stylistic puzzle left in the division. Volkanovski meets Evloev this Saturday, Oct. 24, in Abu Dhabi, and the challenger arrives at 20-0 as a pro and 10-0 in the UFC since debuting in 2019. Seven years, 10 wins, zero losses.
Also zero finishes. Evloev has never stopped anybody inside the Octagon, which is why it took him a decade’s worth of wins to get here. His last four came against Lerone Murphy, Aljamain Sterling, Arnold Allen and Diego Lopes. Lopes then jumped the line and fought Volkanovski twice for the belt while Evloev waited. Demetrious Johnson has publicly questioned how Evloev has even kept his roster spot, given how the UFC has treated decision-heavy winners lately. Farid Basharat, unbeaten in seven UFC fights and ranked in the bantamweight top 10, was recently let go.
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Volkanovski has spent fight week poking at that exact weakness. He’s said Evloev’s wrestling won’t be enough and that the challenger will eventually have to stand and trade if he wants the belt. Evloev’s response, via MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn, was a fun bit of contrarianism: “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.”
He was a little more diplomatic with MMA Fighting’s José Youngs, saying he’s been working on finishing ability since his last win and floating the idea of a stoppage. “Now, maybe my first finish in my first title fight, why not? I have everything to do that,” he said. His plan for getting there still runs straight through the wrestling. Evloev told Youngs that if he does knock Volkanovski out, it’ll be because the takedowns worked well enough to wear the champion down first.
For his part, Volkanovski has kept his social feeds busy with camp content, including a training challenge where a teammate apparently passed out from exhaustion. “Did he pass out? F*ck man, that was an absolute war,” Volkanovski said in the clip. He’s also reportedly planning a special Cooking With Volk episode with Islam Makhachev in Dagestan, which is not the itinerary of a guy planning his farewell tour.
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My take: the three-fight talk is fine as a mood, but the plan has exactly one fight in it right now. Evloev’s entire game is built to make five rounds feel like 10, and his own stated strategy is to drain the champion first and worry about highlights later. Fifty straight minutes of a man who has never lost leaning on you is the problem, finishes or no finishes. If Volkanovski’s cardio holds up the way his training videos suggest, he can start counting to three on Sunday. If it doesn’t, the retirement questions come back louder, and they come back fast.
