Two-time featherweight champion Alex Volkanovski successfully defended his title for the first of his second championship reign in February and is awaiting his next opponent.
Top 145-pound contender Movsar Evloev seemingly earned a title shot with his majority decision win over No. 3 ranked Lerone Murphy in the UFC London main event last Saturday. The fight was billed as a title eliminator bout.
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Volkanovski tuned in for the match and thought Evloev succumbed to pressure with his game plan. “The Great” believes the undefeated Evloev tried to be ‘more exciting,’ but didn’t pull it off.
“Interesting sort of fight. One thing that I was quite surprised with was Movsar wanting to stand,” Volkanovski said on his YouTube channel. “I feel like, you know, he said, he was acting like (it was) a bit of the game plan and I felt like it was forced. Whether forced, I’m not saying the UFC told him he had to do it, but maybe he just felt that pressure and was like, ‘I can’t just keep wrestling. They’re not going to give me a shot. I’m going to have to stand.’ Which he ended up winning anyway. I thought he looked like the better fighter. Lerone maybe looked a little bit better in the first half, but not much was happening.
“It was funny because Mosvar, as soon as he wanted to grapple and wrestle, even then it wasn’t like he just shot for those. It was more, because he literally didn’t want to do it, but he’d fire and he was there and would just grab, and the takedown was just sort of there. The opportunity was there and it was just instinct and he would get him down so easy,” continued Volkanovski. “He wasn’t able to hold him very easily, but he still controlled him quite comfortably.”
Jerone Murphy is not Alexander Volkanovski, though. And the champion pointed that out in a strong message to the top contender.
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“Obviously that fight was No. 1 contender,” Volkanovski said. “I don’t care about it because it ain’t going to be a boring fight with me because you ain’t holding me down. I can guarantee you that. That’s one thing that I’m very confident in,” Volkanovski said.
“One thing I did say, I said in the post-show when I did like a live feed, a live post-reaction show. It was through the UFC straight after the show. And I’m just saying to him, I’m like, I don’t want you to feel like you have to strike with me and all this. I don’t want any excuses. I want you trying to spam the wrestling because I know you ain’t going to get them. If you did get me to the ground, I’m bouncing straight back up and I’m going to force you to fight on the feet anyway,” continued the champion.
“That’s why I know that style ain’t going to be boring when you’re fight me because no one going to sit there and control me in a position. If anything, if he wants to try and take me down, I bet you I end up on top and do more damage than him in that aspect anyway … I want him to do whatever he thinks he can. I want him to just try and win. He’s obviously a winner. He knows how to win. And I want him to try that with me just to show him, yeah, you know how to win but not against me. You don’t know how to win against me. And I can really prove that. I’m very confident in that.”
