Alexander Volkanovski made it clear in Las Vegas why he is number two in the pound-for-pound rankings. The Australian defeated the Mexican Yair Rodríguez in the third round by TKO and retained the featherweight champion belt. An evening that left a very tense face-to-face between the winner and Ilia Topuria at the end that left no one indifferent. Alexander made it very clear: “Ilia is talking too much, I will go after him and crush him.”
The Hispano-Georgian has responded to the threats from his next opponent in an interview with ESPN. The matador He stated that he really wants the title fight to take place: “That he recover if he has any injury and that he show up in December. And in front of the whole world, legally, I will rip its little head off.” After the Australian’s victory, he stated that the result of the fight was as expected for him: “I said it and so it happened. Yair looked horrible, he looked like a rag, fatal, he didn’t fight. I wasn’t surprised because I never liked Yair’s style. A guy who doesn’t even need to be thrown, he falls down on his own. It was an easy job”.
For his part, after beating Yair, Volkanovski stated that he had to undergo surgery to recover from an arm injury. A fact that has not gone unnoticed by Ilia in the statements collected by this same medium: “It is an excuse that sounds quite familiar to me about the shoulderbut if it has to be recovered, I’m not in a hurry. When he recovers, here I am ready to fight. In this same direction, he continued with his warnings to the featherweight champion: “The shark is me and the rest are little sardines. He has the belt on loan and in December I will take what is mine ”.
Dana White will take the UFC to Spain
The president of the UFC has stated that he is working to bring mixed martial arts to Spain. The ‘boom’ that Topuria has brought about after the victory against Josh Emmet has meant that the company has become interested in bringing the first event to Spanish soil. “I had never considered or thought about going to Spain, now I have the team working to go. It’s very close, it’s coming”said Dana White..
A possible celebration that Ilia himself was in charge of giving relevance. “I am patient, I am not interested in any other fight. I would only be interested if Max Holloway is brought to Spain.