Ultimate Fighting Championship featherweight king Alexander
Volkanovski is eager to remind everyone why he’s been on top of
the featherweight division for almost five years.
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Volkanovski (26-3) is booked to face Ilia
Topuria (14-0) at
UFC 298, which is set to go down Feb. 17 at T-Mobile Arena in
Las Vegas.
While the two were initially rumored to be the main event for
UFC 297, Volkanovski’s
UFC 294 knockout loss against lightweight ruler Islam
Makhachev understandably led to the postponement of the
featherweight title matchup.
“The Great” decided to bet on himself when he challenged Makhachev
on 10 days’ notice in a rematch for the lightweight title. Things
didn’t pan out for the Aussie as he went on to suffer a devastating
Round 1 knockout loss at the hands of the Dagestani.
With Topuria now predicting a first-round finish against him, “The
Great” can’t help but feel that his undefeated opponent might be
coming in with such confidence more so because of his recent
setback at lightweight. However, the 35-year-old is certain that
his skill set will be “too much“ for his opponent to deal with.
“He’s a powerful dude, he’s good everywhere,” Volkanovski told Fox
Sports Australia. “He’s not one-dimensional, he’s obviously very
well-rounded, I just believe my skills and my understanding of the
game, it’s just going to be that little bit too much for him. He’s
a young, hungry dude, undefeated. Very, very confident but I think
he needs a little bit of humbling, so I’m glad to be the man to do
that. He’s a powerful dude, he likes his boxing, but again, I just
need to show him that I’m a whole different breed. He’s going to
come in confident. Probably even more confident after my last
performance. There’s a lot of people who are going to be like,
‘What’s going on here?’ And I can’t wait to show them why I’ve been
the king of this division for so long.”
A win against Topuria at UFC 298 would mark the sixth title defense
of Volkanovski’s decorated reign at 145 pounds.