Alexander Volkanovski Won’t Defend His UFC Title Like His Prime Days, Says Former Double Champ

During his first reign as featherweight king, Alexander Volkanovski was a machine—defending his title like it was just another day at the office. But at 36 years old, those days are behind him. 

Or at least that’s what former UFC champion Henry Cejudo claims. After capturing the title from Max Holloway at UFC 245 for the first time in December 2019, he defended it multiple times against top contenders. His first defense came in July 2020 in a rematch against Holloway only a couple of months later at UFC 251. 

He then faced Brian Ortega at UFC 266, followed by Chan Sung Jung at UFC 273. Volkanovski continued his dominance with a thifecta win against Holloway in July 2022 at UFC 276 and followed it by unifying the featherweight title against Yair Rodríguez at UFC 290. That’s 9 title fights in exactly half the years. 

Now that Volkanovski has reclaimed the 145-pound belt, Cejudo believes his second stint as champ won’t be a festival of title defences.

“Alexander Volkanovksi, do I believe he is going to defend like he did back in the day? No. I think we will hear and new but you know, kudos to Volkanovski for getting the victory, I thought it was 4-1″, he told Inside Fighting. 

Interestingly, in the lead up to the Diego Lopes fight last weekend, Volk had promised to defend the 145 lbs title against Movsar Evloev in three months time. But can he actually do that?

Volk gets shaky on Movsar promise

Earlier today, the featherweight champion posted a video on his social media channels, lauding Lopes for his effort and revealing the state of his injuries.

Still black and blue from the Lopes’ powerful shots, Volk pointed out that courtesy of the injuries inside his mouth, he won’t be able to eat properly for at least a couple of weeks.

While he did not speak about the rest of his injuries, during the post-fight conference on Sunday, concerns were raised about Volkanovski’s sight after he was noticed blinking only one of his eyes.

During another one of these interviews, he had also claimed to have had the knowledge of Yair Rodriguez challenging him for the title and said that he was open to it if the UFC was as well.

And as far as Evloev was concerned, he wasn’t sure if the 90-day timeline was going to work at this point.

“I mean, Movsar, if they want to do that, if they wanna quickly go and I feel good, maybe a quick turnaround with Movsar if I don’t have busted hands. That was my plan, bang, bang, bang”, said the featherweight champion.

However, he remains interested in the fight, claiming he would like to take the 0 from the 19-0 undefeated challenger.

In the meantime, Volk is getting his flowers from all over the globe. While the UFC community and his peers are celebrating the return of ‘Prime Volk’, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has also logged in to laud the man of the hour.

Volkanovski gets CR7 shoutout

Coming off back-to-back knockout losses, questions were being raised about whether Volkanovski could still hang in the octagon with the top talents. 

A couple of days since UFC 314, nobody is questioning anything anymore.

And in that spirit, the patron saint of once-GOATed athletes, Ronaldo, congratulated the Aussie for becoming the first fighter aged 35 to win a title at lightweight or below. 

Ronaldo has been a long-time fan of combat sports and has been seen at multiple PFL, UFC, and boxing events. Notably, he had predicted a Max Holloway win against Ilia Topuria at UFC 308 last year, stating that the Spaniard talked too much. In response, Topuria laughed at what he considered an ironic remark.