Alexander Volkanovski says he was expecting Movsar Evloev to be his next opponent.
Volkanovski (27-4 MMA, 14-3 UFC) recently regained the UFC featherweight title by defeating Diego Lopes in the main event at UFC 314 in April. With Evloev (19-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) riding the longest winning streak in the division, there had been speculation that he would be next in line to challenge for Volkanovski’s belt.
However, Evloev recently put those rumors to rest when he took to social media to announce that the two are set to compete on separate dates in the near future.
“Alexander Volkanovski, thank you champ for trying to fight me,” Evloev tweeted. “I will fight in July and you fight in September. Hopefully, we both win and can meet in December.”
Although Evloev didn’t name his opponent, it has been widely speculated that he is set to face former Bellator star Aaron Pico, making him unavailable to fight Volkanovski.
“It's pretty clear that it wasn't going to be Movsar, because that's who I thought it would be, obviously him being undefeated on the sort of a tear that he's on”, Volkanovski said this week during an appearance on Main Event TV. “But I think they've matched him up. You've seen him tweet something about that. So he's already went out and made that public that he obviously unfortunately can't fight for the title.”
As for Volkanovski, rumors have been mounting concerning a possible rematch against Yair Rodriguez (20-5 MMA, 11-4 UFC), whom he beat during his first title reign back in 2023.
“Yeah his name has popped up”, the Australian said. “No dates set right now. So again, I think it's just a lot of moving parts all through the whole division, so I think there's a lot happening right now. So we'll see what's happening. We'll see what comes up. But that's all I guess I can really tell you is, everyone pretty much knows the situation and the rumors you're hearing are pretty much true, but nothing's locked in.”
