Alexander Volkanovski defends his featherweight title against Movsar Evloev at UFC 333 on October 24 at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. Fans booed Evloev at a fight-week press conference in Los Angeles in September while cheering Volkanovski, and the champion did not enjoy it.
“The boos are meant to get in his head, and it’s getting more into my head than his, I reckon,” Volkanovski said on the Precision podcast.
That is a strange thing for a champion to say about his own crowd advantage. It is also the correct thing.
Why Evloev gets booed
He is 20-0 and has never finished a fight in 10 UFC appearances. Thirteen of his 20 wins are decisions. His most recent outing was a majority decision over Lerone Murphy in March.
Fans boo grapplers who win on points. That is not new and it is not fair, and Evloev has arrived at a title shot without ever being given the benefit of a knockout highlight.
Volkanovski defended the resume directly. “Evloev took the long road to the title,” he said, adding that he “almost feels bad for the guy.”
The champion is making the case for his own opponent
“If you deserve it, let’s do it, and he does deserve it, so I’m glad it’s happening,” Volkanovski said.
Fighters do not usually sell the legitimacy of the man trying to take their belt. Volkanovski, 38 and a two-time featherweight champion with a 28-4 record, won the vacant title at UFC 314 and defended it at UFC 325 in February.
He has nothing to gain from talking Evloev up. He did it anyway, which is consistent with how he has carried the division.
Evloev is the hardest kind of challenger
Twenty professional fights and nobody has beaten him. He is 32, the clear No. 1 contender, and his style is built to take away exactly what makes Volkanovski dangerous: forward pressure, volume and the ability to dictate range.
A fighter who wins 13 of 20 by decision is a fighter who controls where the fight takes place. That is a real threat to a champion whose best weapon is pace.
The flip side is that Evloev has never finished anyone in the UFC, and Volkanovski has survived five-round wars against the best featherweights of the era. Twenty-five minutes against a man who has never put anyone away is a bet Volkanovski will take.
What makes this fight interesting
Nobody involved is pretending. The champion says the challenger earned it. The challenger is undefeated. The crowd has decided it does not want to watch grappling, and both men know that is the actual subtext of the boos.
October 24 in Abu Dhabi, featherweight title, 28-4 against 20-0. If Evloev wins a decision, the arena will boo a new champion. He has probably made peace with that already.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.