38-year-old UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski appears to be getting increasingly comfortable with talking about his potential retirement after acknowledging that health comes first when it comes to deciding the right time to hang up his gloves.

“I’m content now,” Volkanovski admitted during an interview on The Ariel Helwani Show yesterday.

“I’m blessed to be a fighter that doesn’t need to do this… I’m taking each fight as it goes. ‘Why do we want to do this?’ Obviously, the paycheck. We ain’t never gonna get paychecks like this ever again.

“But I want to look after my health. The injuries around the body are okay. The head stuff, I don’t wanna mess around with. One hard knock to the brain, a concussion and that’s that.

“That’s how I’m looking at this. I’m weighing all these options.”

Volkanovski used to push aside any talk of retiring, but in recent times he’s openly discussed it, and in fact before his latest win over Movsar Evloev at the weekend actually pitched a potential retirement lightweight title fight against Justin Gaethje.

Volkanovski has also signalled his willingness to defend his featherweight belt against Aljamain Sterling too, provided he gets past Kevin Vallejos in November, but as things stand he’s not indicated that he would also be looking to retire after that fight, unless it went badly.