Alexander Volkanovski reveals he will 'probably' wait for featherweight title fight as UFC aren't fans of division 'floating'
29/08/2024 16:41
Former featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski has been sitting on the sidelines since February, deciding whether or not he will take another fight in between Ilia Topuria defending his title against Max Holloway.
Following his UFC 298 title loss against Ilia Topuria, Alexander Volkanovski told the UFC he was going to take some much-needed time off after suffering two knockout losses in quick succession.
With that, the promotion recently announced that Topuria’s first title defense will come against Max Holloway at UFC 308 in October but ‘The Great’ thought it would be sooner than that.
Alexander Volkanovski reveals he will ‘probably’ wait for featherweight title fight
The former champion has admitted that he isn’t interested in fighting a contender fight at featherweight as the promotion already told him his next featherweight fight could be for the title.
“I told them I wanted a break, as I’ve been having so I wanted to fight maybe later in the year and they said they might be doing (Topuria vs Holloway) and I thought it’d be a little bit earlier but it ended up being a date where I was like, I could’ve maybe come back here,” Volkanovski began to explain in an interview with Sky Sports NZ.
“Everything is probably going to be pushed back a couple of months further than I would’ve liked but at the same time, I can’t be active and just fight anybody or I can wait for the title. What gets me out of bed, just a contender at featherweight is probably gonna be hard,” Volk continued.
Volkanovski did hint that he may move up to lightweight and highlighted the likes of Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier as possible dance partners, however, he seems to have made his mind up that he will wait for the culmination of Topuria vs Holloway and will fight the winner.
“Yeah for sure (you can expect me to fight the winner of that fight), that’s exactly what’s happening. I can wait or if I don’t want to wait I can do something else. Or just wait and the UFC has made it clear and obviously that’s probably what I’m gonna do.
“I could’ve maybe done a lightweight fight, I think there’s a lot of exciting fights there, but the UFC aren’t big fans of floating (between weights), they’d go, look, ‘You wanna go to lightweight you’re gonna have to stay there’, and then I might lose that featherweight title shot. It’s only a couple of months (wait), I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Volk added.
Dana White teases an Alexander Volkanovski fight announcement
Although ‘The Great’ has claimed that he will ‘probably’ wait for the featherweight title shot, UFC CEO Dana White hinted this past Wednesday on an Instagram live video that they have fight news concerning the former champion.
During the live video, White was asked whether a fight between Volkanovski and Oliveira was being looked at, to which he replied: “Oliveira vs Volkanovski? We’ve got news coming out for both of those guys real soon.”
Bizarrely, the UFC boss also claimed that they have fight news coming out for ‘Blessed’ Holloway, likely forgetting that they have already announced his title fight against ‘El Matador’.
