Alexander Volkanovski appears to have decided to sit out and wait for an opportunity to fight for the featherweight title, believing that he will be lined up to face the winner of the upcoming Ilia Topuriar vs. Max Holloway showdown at UFC 308 in October.
“Yeah for sure, that’s exactly what’s happening,” Volkanovski told Sky Sport NZ when asked if he’d be next for the winner of that featherweight title fight. “I can wait or if I don’t want to wait I can do something else. Or just wait and the UFC has made it clear and obviously that’s probably what I’m gonna do.
“I could’ve maybe done a lightweight fight, I think there’s a lot of exciting fights there, but the UFC aren’t big fans of floating (between weights), they’d go, look, ‘You wanna go to lightweight you’re gonna have to stay there’, and then I might lose that featherweight title shot. It’s only a couple of months (wait), I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Interestingly, Dana White teased during an Instagram Live video yesterday that he has news coming up soon about Volkanovski. There was some speculation that could mean he had a fight booked, but it could just be confirmation that he’s going to be next in line for the title shot.
White did however add some confusion by also adding that he had news coming up about Max Holloway too, which would be odd given that ‘Blessed’ is already scheduled to fight 145lb champ Ilia Topuria, but it’s possible he just misspoke as he was just one of a number of fighters he claimed had news coming up, including Conor McGregor, Michael Chandler and Charles Oliveira as well.
