Alexander Volkanovski’s Retirement Talk Meets the One Fighter Who Never Loses

The loudest words out of Alexander Volkanovski‘s mouth this week have had nothing to do with the man he’s fighting on Saturday.

That much was clear by Wednesday, when the champion took the stage at Yas Mall for the open workout and the questions followed him off it. There was the “another 3 fights” arithmetic, delivered to MMA Junkie with his usual bluntness. There was the superfight idea, Justin Gaethje, both belts, both gloves coming off. “Let’s do a superfight, lightweight title on the line and then we can both (retire),” Volkanovski said on the Who The Fook Are These Guys podcast. “Then, straight after that, let the division sort themselves out. Let’s make that happen.” Later he clarified that the next fight doesn’t have to be the last one. The clarification is doing a lot of work.

None of that is what the oddsmakers are watching. The price on Saturday’s main event is a dead pick’em: Evloev -115 against Volkanovski -105 on the book USA Today printed Thursday, -110 a side in Sherdog’s preview. Kalshi, quoted by Covers, puts Evloev at 53 percent. The distance prop sits at 73 percent. And on Sherdog’s fastest-finish board for the card, Volkanovski-Evloev is +1600 to produce the quickest stoppage, the longest odds of any bout in Abu Dhabi. Nobody expects either man to end it early. No blowout either.

The challenger hasn’t given anyone a reason to expect otherwise. Movsar Evloev is 20-0, 10-0 in the UFC, and every single one of those ten wins went the distance. Against Lerone Murphy in March he took the fight down nine times. That decision earned him this shot. The style is unglamorous and unsentimental: pressure, takedowns, rounds banked. Volkanovski named it himself on UFC.com this week. “Every time he’s had problems, he could rely on that wrestling and grappling to get him out of trouble. And you’ve got to respect that skill,” the champion said. “But that doesn’t work with me. That’s not a get out of jail free card with me. When you’re panicking, when you’re freaking out, you don’t get to just grab hold of me and hang on to a leg or anything like that… I just think that I’m a bit of a nightmare matchup for him.”

He has the record to say it. Volkanovski has stuffed 68 percent of the takedowns attempted on him in the UFC, and in 32 professional fights nobody has ever submitted him. But the one man who solved him standing up has picked the challenger. Islam Makhachev, who knocked Volkanovski out twice at lightweight, told talkSPORT this week: “Honestly, Volkanovski is not at the same peak he was a couple of years ago, even though he is still one of the best fighters. I think it’ll be a very competitive fight, but I hope Movsar will do his job.”

“I’m siding with Volk on this one,” UFC analyst Laura Sanko told MMA Junkie, a different read on the same tape. “Father Time comes for all of us. But I think this is a matchup where he has enough of a striking edge and enough of a defensive grappling ability and get-up ability where, unless Movsar can get him down and really just destroy the clock and keep Volk from being able to land enough damage when they do separate — I think just skill-wise Volk is the superior fighter in this matchup.”

Volkanovski isn’t promising 25 minutes. He told MMA Junkie he’ll finish Evloev, and he picked the manner of it too. “I think I can get my hand raised and I think I can do it in pretty wild fashion,” he said. “I believe I can get a finish. I believe I can do it inside five.”

The man promising the finish has been stopped by knockout once. The man receiving the promise has never been finished at all. That is the whole of the math, and it is why the question hanging over a sold-out Etihad Arena on Saturday isn’t whether Volkanovski still has the tools. It is where his attention has been all week, the three-fight plan, the Gaethje send-off, the wild fashion of it all, and whether a 32-year-old who has never lost has noticed.

Evloev’s UFC ledger stands at ten fights, ten decisions, and he has never been finished.