Latest news with #MightyCast
West Australian
7 days ago
- Sport
- West Australian
Aussie champion Alexander Volkanovski reveals family urged him to retire from UFC
UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski has revealed his family and friends advised him to retire following his title fight win on UFC 314 back in April this year. The two-time division champion made the admission on former UFC and ONE FC champion Demetrious Johnson's 'MightyCast' podcast. Following consecutive knockout defeats to Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria, Volkanovski had a 13-month hiatus from the cage before facing Brazilian fighter Diego Lopes for the vacant featherweight title. The 36-year-old said that his family had thought it would be the last time he stepped in the octagon. 'Straight after the fight, my whole family is like, 'why didn't you just put the gloves down in the middle of that octagon straight away?', they all want me to retire,' Volkanovski explained. 'They all wanted me to, but now that I'm making the decision to keep going, I'm not probably going to bring that back up purely because they're worried about affecting my frame of mind. 'I'll be alright, they can say what they want, and maybe they're just trying to be selective. 'But they made it clear that they all wanted me to stop straight after this fight.' Johnson later pondered when is the right time to retire for a UFC fighter, posing the question to Volkanovski and how he views it with his current career trajectory. 'I had the two losses, and then I had … the resurgence,' Volkanovski said. 'I ain't looking to do a resurgence ever again. 'I know it's not too far away.' The Aussie went on to discuss future opponents he'd like to face to defend his belt. 'You ask me who I'd be most excited for, It probably would be Movsar [Evloev],' he said. 'He deserves it, he's a guy that hasn't been beaten, he's undefeated. 'The last undefeated guy (I fought) I lost to [Topuria]. 'I haven't fought in my division a legit wrestler/grappler. 'At the end of the day when people look back at my resume, I reckon his [Evloev] is gonna mean so much more.' Volkanovski is expected to return to the octagon to defend the featherweight belt sometime after September this year, with his wife expecting to give birth to their fourth child.
Perth Now
7 days ago
- Sport
- Perth Now
Aussie champion reveals family urged him to retire
UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski has revealed his family and friends advised him to retire following his title fight win on UFC 314 back in April this year. The two-time division champion made the admission on former UFC and ONE FC champion Demetrious Johnson's 'MightyCast' podcast. Following consecutive knockout defeats to Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria, Volkanovski had a 13-month hiatus from the cage before facing Brazilian fighter Diego Lopes for the vacant featherweight title. The 36-year-old said that his family had thought it would be the last time he stepped in the octagon. 'Straight after the fight, my whole family is like, 'why didn't you just put the gloves down in the middle of that octagon straight away?', they all want me to retire,' Volkanovski explained. 'They all wanted me to, but now that I'm making the decision to keep going, I'm not probably going to bring that back up purely because they're worried about affecting my frame of mind. 'I'll be alright, they can say what they want, and maybe they're just trying to be selective. 'But they made it clear that they all wanted me to stop straight after this fight.' Johnson later pondered when is the right time to retire for a UFC fighter, posing the question to Volkanovski and how he views it with his current career trajectory. 'I had the two losses, and then I had … the resurgence,' Volkanovski said. 'I ain't looking to do a resurgence ever again. 'I know it's not too far away.' Alexander Volkanovski calls to fight Movsar Evloev to defend his UFC featherweight belt. Credit: Getty Images The Aussie went on to discuss future opponents he'd like to face to defend his belt. 'You ask me who I'd be most excited for, It probably would be Movsar [Evloev],' he said. 'He deserves it, he's a guy that hasn't been beaten, he's undefeated. 'The last undefeated guy (I fought) I lost to [Topuria]. 'I haven't fought in my division a legit wrestler/grappler. 'At the end of the day when people look back at my resume, I reckon his [Evloev] is gonna mean so much more.' Volkanovski is expected to return to the octagon to defend the featherweight belt sometime after September this year, with his wife expecting to give birth to their fourth child.
7NEWS
09-07-2025
- Sport
- 7NEWS
Aussie champion Alexander Volkanovski reveals family urged him to retire from UFC
UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski has revealed his family and friends advised him to retire following his title fight win on UFC 314 back in April this year. The two-time division champion made the admission on former UFC and ONE FC champion Demetrious Johnson's 'MightyCast' podcast. Following consecutive knockout defeats to Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria, Volkanovski had a 13-month hiatus from the cage before facing Brazilian fighter Diego Lopes for the vacant featherweight title. The 36-year-old said that his family had thought it would be the last time he stepped in the octagon. 'Straight after the fight, my whole family is like, 'why didn't you just put the gloves down in the middle of that octagon straight away?', they all want me to retire,' Volkanovski explained. 'They all wanted me to, but now that I'm making the decision to keep going, I'm not probably going to bring that back up purely because they're worried about affecting my frame of mind. 'I'll be alright, they can say what they want, and maybe they're just trying to be selective. 'But they made it clear that they all wanted me to stop straight after this fight.' Johnson later pondered when is the right time to retire for a UFC fighter, posing the question to Volkanovski and how he views it with his current career trajectory. 'I had the two losses, and then I had … the resurgence,' Volkanovski said. 'I ain't looking to do a resurgence ever again. 'I know it's not too far away.' The Aussie went on to discuss future opponents he'd like to face to defend his belt. 'You ask me who I'd be most excited for, It probably would be Movsar [Evloev],' he said. 'He deserves it, he's a guy that hasn't been beaten, he's undefeated. 'The last undefeated guy (I fought) I lost to [Topuria]. 'I haven't fought in my division a legit wrestler/grappler. 'At the end of the day when people look back at my resume, I reckon his [Evloev] is gonna mean so much more.' Volkanovski is expected to return to the octagon to defend the featherweight belt sometime after September this year, with his wife expecting to give birth to their fourth child.
USA Today
02-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Cory Sandhagen suggests game plan for Sean O'Malley to dethrone Merab Dvalishvili
Cory Sandhagen suggests game plan for Sean O'Malley to dethrone Merab Dvalishvili Cory Sandhagen advises Sean O'Malley on how to beat UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili. After losing his title to Dvalishvili at UFC 306 by unanimous decision last September, O'Malley (18-2 MMA, 10-2 UFC) will run things back with Dvalishvili (19-4 MMA, 12-2 UFC) on June 7 in the UFC 316 headliner at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. O'Malley struggled to mount any offense against Dvalishvili after he was stifled and controlled on the ground for five rounds. He managed to hurt Dvalishvili with a late body kick, but outside of that, it was largely Dvalishvili dominating the fight. Sandhagen thinks O'Malley needs to do a better job of capitalizing when Dvalishvili makes his entries and let his strikes go more instead of just looking for the kill shot. "O'Malley's real shot at winning this thing is a puncher's chance, kind of," Sandhagen said on the "MightyCast" with Demetrious Johnson. "Merab is going to take O'Malley down a number of times in this next fight. O'Malley's ability to get up was really bad in his first fight with Merab. He was doing steps that he could have just – there's better ways to stand up than the ways he was going about doing it. O'Malley is going to get taken down a lot, and hopefully he learned how to stand up a lot better, because getting taken down is going to happen. When you're a long, lanky guy, it's really hard to stop people from getting underneath you. "So it's not as much about defending the shot as much as it is, can I get up immediately? And if Sean does that a lot better, he'll do a lot better in the next fight. Sean's not really a point guy, he's not going to score a bunch of nips and picks from the outside and try to win that way. O'Malley wants to put your lights out type of guy, and if he just continues to try to put Merab's lights out, I think that's just going to weigh against him. I think he needs really to control the pace of the fight, the scoring piece of the standup, so that if he does get taken down and he gets back up, he can start to engage." Sandhagen pointed to the mistakes both O'Malley and Umar Nurmagomedov did in their title-fight losses to Dvalishvili. "I don't think the answer to beating Merab is a ton of footwork and keeping space," Sandhagen said. "I think O'Malley's a lot longer, like Umar tried it, and O'Malley tried it the first time: Move your feet, keep a bunch of distance, and do it that way. That's a way to do it, but when a guy has a massive gas tank that's just like a superhero, I think that you just set your space and when Merab gets close to you, you hit that fool. "And that sounds really simple and maybe not the most technical way, but I do think that's a way to combat the conditioning piece. I don't even think that he has to bring it to Merab, he just has to just try to counter him, but not counter and reset a thousand times. He just has to stand there, defend the shots as best he can, and when Merab gets close to him, just hit him." Sandhagen (17-5 MMA, 10-4 UFC) will look to stake his claim for a title shot when he meets Deiveson Figueiredo (24-4-1 MMA, 13-4-1 UFC) in Saturday's UFC on ESPN 67 (ESPN2, ESPN+) main event at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, Iowa.
