UFC 333’s Alex Volkanovski doubles down on ‘champion vs. champion’ retirement fight against Justin Gaethje

Megan Briggs (L), Chris Unger (R) | Getty Images

Jesse Holland is among the longest-tenured media professionals in the combat sports news space, covering MMA, professional wrestling and boxing on a full-time basis since early 2004.

Alexander Volkanovski has no plans to retire.

That said, the reigning featherweight champion would agree to hang ‘em up if the promotion was willing to grant him another crack at the lightweight crown, despite coming up short in two previous attempts. That would require the approval of current 155-pound kingpin Justin Gaethje, who appears to be on the fence about his own UFC retirement.

“I mean look, I’m not the one to just call for title fights,” Volkanovski said in a recent interview with The Mac Life. “There are so many guys that are deserving in that lightweight division, but I just look at it from a sense of, if I can fit into this equation, it could be the fact that we know Justin is unsure of what he wants to do, maybe one more, like where’s he at with it?”

Before Volkanovski can pursue a second title, he’ll first need to turn back undefeated featherweight contender Movsar Evloev atop the UFC 333 fight card this weekend in Abu Dhabi. He would also need to leapfrog top lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan and former 155-pound champion Ilia Topuria.

“He doesn’t wanna do rematches, I haven’t fought him, and I don’t have any plans of retiring other than if we were to do something like this,” Volkanovski continued. “Maybe we agree that it’s like, let’s have our last fight, super fight, champion vs. champion. We’re not holding the divisions up because we’re gonna see ourselves off and let the divisions do their thing. I just think that could happen, that’s why I threw it out there.”

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