Alexander Volkanovski now has an incentive to fight Max Holloway again.
Former featherweight champion Volkanovski (26-4 MMA, 13-3 UFC) has beaten Holloway (26-7 MMA, 22-7 UFC) three times in title fights, and is the only fighter to get the best of “Blessed” at 145 pounds in the past 10 years.
Volkanovski put a stamp in their trilogy with a dominant performance at UFC 276 in July 2022.
With Volkanovski as champion, Holloway found himself in a quandary, because a fourth fight was always going to be a hard sell. But after Ilia Topuria dethroned Volkanovski in February at UFC 298, and Holloway knocked out Justin Gaethje to claim the BMF title at UFC 300, suddenly a fourth fight isn’t out of the realm of possibility for Volkanovski.
“Would I fight him (Holloway)? I mean, now that he’s got a BMF we might have to do this, you know what I mean?” Volkanovski told Fox Sports Australia. “I was always sitting there like, ‘How could you do it (a fourth fight)?’
“But maybe there is that something there – you know, there’s a BMF now. For me, it’s 3-0, how can you get yourself out of bed for that? A BMF is something I haven’t touched before, so maybe we can do that, you know? So we’ll see what happens.”
For now, Volkanovski is focused on running things back with Topuria. Holloway, meanwhile, positioned himself in title contention with his knockout of Gaethje, but Topuria’s first title defense is yet to be announced.
