Alexander Volkanovski, UFC featherweight champion has spoken about the Mackhachev rematch and his upcoming fight against Yair Rodriguez.
Alexander “The Great” fights Yair Rodriguez at UFC 290 in Las Vegas as part of the UFCs “International Fight Week” and he spoke to the MMA Fan Podcast about that matchup.
However, he spent the first half of the interview discussing the Islam fight and a potential rematch after his clash with Yair.
Alexander Volkanovski Discusses the Mackhachev Fight
Co-Host of the podcast Blake Harrison began by asking:
“How do you feel the response has been since the Mackhachev fight?”
Volk responded: “Yeah man, exactly what you said. The stocks definitely rose from that fight. I’m always going to be hard on myself because I’m a winner, and I’m very competitive. I wanted that “champ-champ” and we thought we did enough. But you’re right, it does make the loss a bit easier when everyone is pretty much congratulating me”
He continued about being the underdog in that fight “When we talk about that underdog story, a lot of people literally believed I didn’t stand a chance. And these are people that support me and believe in me and still thought ‘Oh I don’t know about this one.’ It’s funny how much of an underdog I was, I had people close to me who thought this was a big ask.”
Mackhachev Rematch
The conversation then shifted to the rematch where Stu Wiffen asked:
“Obviously you’ve got Yair next, once that’s done is that when you’re looking to go back up?”
“A week after they (the matchmakers) asked me what I wanted to do, do you want to wait for a rematch? Giving me these options and it was up to me, I was like “I don’t wanna wait” I knew he wouldn’t be fighting until later in the year. I ain’t waiting around, let me just do this featherweight fight with Yair Rodriguez”
Talking about changes he would make for the rematch Volkanovski said: “Their teams gonna try and make adjustments, but at the same time he’s got more of a style that he’s always going to stick to. He obviously showed more of his striking but I don’t think he has a style that’s gonna change a lot. I don’t think he’s going to be that aggressive coming forward to me. I’m the time of guy where I can change whatever, more grappling, wrestling, pressure I could stay in the pocket, longer range, I could fight southpaw the whole fight if I wanted, I’ve got a lot of options.”
Yair Rodriguez Fight
Stu asked: “He (Yair) has got quite an unorthodox fight style, so we’re interested to know, how do you prep for someone like Yair?”
Volk began “You need to be on, very defensively aware. He’s very unpredictable. You can’t just sit there and let him do his thing. Because he is probably one of the most dangerous fighters in the UFC. You’ve gotta respect that. At the same time, my style is about making people fight my fight.”
Volk then spoke on his mindset “That excites me again, people look for easy challenges, just so they can get more wins. For me, yeah obviously you want rubies, those defences, it’s money you know and the stock rises. But I want the bigger fights, I want the dangerous fights that excite you as well. I want to be excited in the gym, I want to be excited when we break someone down when we watch the tape.”
Alexander then spoke of Yair’s KO of The Korean Zombie “You’re thinking he’s in this position, he could easily grab his back or maybe go to the clinch and throw a knee and the next minute the elbow is coming from this weird angle. Very Very unpredictable. If you watch that fight he actually did it a couple of times, when I first saw it I thought I was like “man that was weird” I just thought he was there and just decided to throw it or did he accidentally throw it. It just shows you there is a method to the madness.”
To conclude on Yair, Volk had this to say: “A lot of the crazy unpredictable things he’s doing, they’re calculated, and an unpredictable, dangerous and calculated is obviously a dangerous fighter, so you gotta respect that. Like I said, it’s exciting.”
Alexander Volkanovski Full Discussion
Here’s the full interview with Alexander Volkanovski from The MMA Fan Podcast youtube channel.
Featured image credits to Embed from Getty Images
