‘I want to move up and fight at lightweight as well’ – A supremely confident Alexander Volkanovski reveals
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Alexander “The Great” Volkanovski has recently revealed that he is interested in moving up a weight division – to the lightweight division. The current featherweight champion from Australia has suffered just one loss in his entire professional MMA career and is currently 9-0 in the UFC, having won the title against Max Holloway last year at UFC 245 and successfully defending it once this year against him at UFC 251.
Speaking to Sam Bruce of ESPN, an uber-confident Volkanovski spoke of his plans to move up a weight class and prove all his doubters wrong.
“People are going to say what they want” – Alexander Volkanovski
Speaking of his desire to move to the lightweight division, Volkanovski said, “It is, that is something that I definitely see down the line. But I don’t talk about it because I have jobs to do; I’ve got goals on my mind. But the thing that people have got to realize is that while I might have goals in front of me, they’re not my end goals.
So my goal might be the belt, it might be defending that belt and my goal is still to defend that [featherweight] belt, but I want to be the best fighter there is, and that is a goal of mine. And to do so, I want to move up and fight [at lightweight] as well. I definitely want to squeeze in a lightweight fight as well.” [Via ESPN]
He further added, “People are going to say what they want. For me, I believe that what I’ve done, people don’t understand the skill that’s involved. People will say that I’m all hype or I got lucky because they don’t understand the skill; so of course you’re going to get people that will say I can’t handle myself in lightweight.
But I don’t worry about them, because people that know the game, especially my opponents, they know where my level is, and I’ve trained with guys much bigger than me and I still do and I always have. So I know how I’d do against some of the best lightweights in the world anyway, even the best welterweights. [Via ESPN]
Speaking of proving the naysayers wrong, Volkanovski said, “And I want people to think that guys like Ortega, or whoever it’s going to be after him, I want them to think that ‘this is the guy.’ I want them to hype up our fights because I love proving them wrong. And when I move up [they’ll say] ‘he’s too small’, whatever. I love those doubters, and it drives me more, it motivates me more, and I’ll just go out and prove them wrong.” [Via ESPN]
Well, the lightweight division is probably ‘the’ toughest division in the UFC. Now, that Khabib has retired, the fight for the crown has intensified to Gargantuan proportions. Would you like to see the Aussie switch to 155? Does Volkanovski have what it takes to succeed in the lightweight division?
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Gerard Crispin
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