UFC 273: Alexander the Greatest?
Featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski is the top man in the 145-pound division, but he just might be the best fighter on the planet as well
Alexander Volkanovski is set to defend his featherweight title this weekend, squaring off with “The Korean Zombie,” Chan Sung Jung, in the main even of UFC 273 in Jacksonville, Florida.
The 33-year-old Australian enters with a perfect 10-0 mark inside the Octagon, riding a 20-fight winning streak, and sporting a 23-1 record overall.
And he just might be the best fighter on the planet as well.
Opinions are always going to vary in conversations and discussions like this, as different people value different things when trying to determine who stands at the top of the sport. There are no absolute right answers; just a handful of names with valid cases to be made in their favour, all of whom deserve consideration and recognition for what they bring to the table.
This is, in essence, what the pound-for-pound rankings and discussions are supposed to be about: figuring out which fighter, if size and the strength that comes with it were evened out, would stand as the best of the best?
It’s a conversation about skills, and while heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou is a tremendous athlete and dominant, physical force for a man his size, skill-for-skill, would you rate him higher than lightweight titleholder Charles Oliveira? Or even former middleweight champ Robert Whittaker? At the absolute least, it’s a conversation to have.
Which brings us to Volkanovski.
His record and the results he’s amassed since arriving the UFC show, beyond debate, that he is an elite talent. You do not win your first 10 fights inside the Octagon against increasingly skilled, dangerous competition the way he has if you’re not an outstanding fighter; it just doesn’t happen.
And if you want to argue that Volkanovski should have lost his second fight with Max Holloway — which ended as a split decision win for the Australia champion — a narrow setback against a former titleholder who is widely regarded as not only one of the best in the division’s history, but one of the top fighters in the sport over the last five years isn’t enough to bump you from elite status, the same way Holloway officially being 0-2 against Volkanovski isn’t a major demerit against the ultra-talented Hawaiian.
But amongst those elite competitors, how does Volkanovski measure up — skill-for-skill, talent-for-talent, intangible-for-intangible?
Striking: there are certainly more dynamic strikers than the featherweight champion, but from a technical standpoint, Volkanovski is a clean boxer who works the body well and does a good job of utilizing the kicks in his arsenal, primarily the low outside kicks that slowed Holloway in each of their two meetings. He’s not a power puncher, but he’s not pillow-fisted either; it’s more of an “all of a sudden, you’re wearing it” kind of deal where the accumulated impact of his sharp jab and arrow-straight right hand doesn’t take long to show up.
Grappling: this one is a bit difficult to judge because he’s moved away from working for takedowns the further up the ladder he’s climbed and the defensive abilities of the opponents he’s facing have grown considerably better. But between those early UFC outings where he racked up multiple and the work he’s shown sporadically since, it’s clear that Volkanovski is a very good grappler for someone who isn’t necessarily a grappler by trade, if that makes sense.
But it’s not just about offensive grappling — you have to consider defensive grappling as well, and that’s where Volkanovski’s acumen on the canvas has shone through most as of late. The former rugby man isn’t someone that tends to get stuck on bottom for too long — he either pops right back up, as he did back in his bout with Chad Mendes, or he’s able to work free and go right back on the offensive, as he did in his most recent clash with Brian Ortega. Middling grapplers don’t do those things, not against those guys.
Conditioning: Volknovski has gone five fives in each of his last three fights, carrying his output over into the latter rounds, if not increasing it as the fight progresses, in each of those contests without showing any appreciable signs of slowing down. What stands out the most is that he’s able to do that as both the aggressor and from a counter-fighting posture, as he showed against Holloway.
You don’t go 25 minutes with “Blessed” in consecutive fights, ramping up your output in the championship rounds, with him marching forward, bringing the fight to you, if you’re not in ridiculous shape. We talk about fighters that have learned to weaponize their pace and pressure a great deal, but we need to spend more time doing the same with athletes that have seemingly bottomless gas tanks and endless reserves of give that allow them to fight this way as well.
Fight IQ: even if you still want to argue that Holloway deserved the nod in their second meeting, you have to at least acknowledge that Volkanovski’s recognition that he was down two rounds and his subsequent in-fight adjustments going forward were outstanding, and the kind of thing not many fighters can do.
From the outset of his UFC career (and likely the start of his career period), Volkanovski has done a tremendous job of either installing and executing the game plan or making on-the-fly adjustments in order to give himself the best opportunity to succeed, which again is not something everyone can do. It’s not as simple as “I need to take this fighter down” or “I have to avoid grappling exchanges,” especially not when you’re fighting people like Ortega, Holloway, or Jose Aldo, and yet Volkanovski has consistently found the correct path to victory, even when he’s had to alter the approach mid-fight.
Championship Mettle: this is one of those amorphous things that is difficult to quantify, but the best way to explain it as it relates to Volkanovski is to look at his reactions and responses after getting stuck in Ortega’s two best submission setups: the mounted guillotine and the triangle choke.
In each situation, Volkanovski followed the same pattern: he stayed calm and committed all of his efforts towards freeing himself from the chokes, and once he did extricate himself from those spots, he was right back on the offensive. He didn’t panic and he didn’t make bad decisions; he hung tough, did the right things, and got free, and once he did, there was no reset or avoidance; he just got up and got after Ortega again.
This is one of those things that can’t be taught, because a lot of it comes down to how you’re wired — the will you possess to push through bad spots and tough moments; whether you’re capable of staying calm under immense pressure; how you respond when things take a sudden turn for the worse — and Volkanovski is clearly someone who is capable of remaining level-headed in tough times and navigating the roughest waters, only to continue pushing forward once the seas have calmed.
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What makes Volkanovski such an intriguing figure to consider in a discussion like this is that he’s unlikely to land at the top of the rankings in the striking and grappling categories, as there are clearly more accomplished, dynamic strikers in the sport and better, more complete grapplers competing inside the Octagon as well.
But he’s very good in each of those areas, and where he gains ground and really makes hay is everywhere else — the conditioning, the Fight IQ, the championship mettle.
It becomes akin to this year’s Best Picture category at the Academy Awards, where a lot of movie critics that correctly projected CODA to win, not because it was going to get the most first place votes in the ranked-choice system, but because it would get a significant number of second and third place votes, while its chief competitor, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, was a more polarizing film that would garner plenty of first place votes, but be ranked significantly lower by some voters as well.
He currently sits at No. 3 in the pound-for-pound rankings on the UFC website and Fight Matrix, behind Kamaru Usman and Israel Adesanya on the former, and trailing Usman and Francis Ngannou on the latter.
Usman feels like his chief rival in this race, while others like Adesanya, Charles Oliveira, Petr Yan, Dustin Poirier, and Holloway should all be considered as well.
For me, Volkanovski is the best overall male fighter in the sport today, edging out Usman, with Petr Yan having a chance to further make his case for one of the top spots again this weekend, but that’s just me.
Where do you think he stacks up?
Is the featherweight champion simply great or is Volkanovski the greatest in the sport right now?