Alexander Volkanovski is enjoying the privileges of being the new king of the featherweight division, including the liberty to conquer another division when he’s ready.
Alexander Volkanovski captured the featherweight championship from Max Holloway at UFC 245 last December and then followed that up with an extremely narrow decision victory over Holloway at July’s UFC 251. Volkanovski expects to go on defending his featherweight title against new challengers next year, beginning with Brian Ortega next. But once Volkanovski is satisfied with his work at 145, he plans on eventually setting his sights on one division up and seizing lightweight gold as well.
“It is, that is something that I definitely see down the line,” Volkanovski told ESPN on becoming a double champion. “But I don’t talk about it because I have jobs to do; I’ve got goals on my mind.
“But the thing that people have got to realize is that while I might have goals in front of me, they’re not my end goals. So my goal might be the belt, it might be defending that belt and my goal is still to defend that [featherweight] belt, but I want to be the best fighter there is, and that is a goal of mine. And to do so, I want to move up and fight [at lightweight] as well.”
Not unlike middleweight champion Israel Adesanya who plans on competing for the light heavyweight championship next year, Alexander Volkanovski wants to tie up on all loose ends in the division he is currently the champion of before making the move up. Volkanovski is already #6 in the pound for pound rankings, if he does get another couple of defenses and then wins a second title, he could easily find himself in the top 2 in the P4P rankings. And with his skills and ambition, Volkanovski will continue doing what is necessary until he reaches the #1 spot.
Do you think Alexander Volkanovski will be a UFC double champion?
