{"id":445257,"date":"2026-01-29T13:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/445257\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:52:08","slug":"ufc-325-alexander-volkanovski-says-he-will-not-retire-after-diego-lopes-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/445257\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 325: Alexander Volkanovski says he will not retire after Diego Lopes fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Volkanovski became a two-time champion with victory over Brazil&#8217;s Lopes in April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve got a tough fight ahead of me,&#8221; said Volkanovski.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m going to get my hand raised and then hopefully a quick turnaround &#8211; hopefully minimal damage so I can get right back in there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Volkanovski, wearing an apron in a nod to his cooking hobby, was cheered raucously by his home fans throughout the news conference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After the face-off with 31-year-old Lopes, the pair shook hands before Volkanovski gave him his apron.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Volkanovski beat Max Holloway for his first belt in 2019 and defended it five times before defeat by Ilia Topuria last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following Topuria&#8217;s move to lightweight and vacation of the title, Volkanovski regained it with a unanimous decision win over Lopes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Volkanovski lost twice to Islam Makhachev 2023 in attempting to win the lightweight title and become a simultaneous two-division champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volkanovski became a two-time champion with victory over Brazil&#8217;s Lopes in April. &#8220;I&#8217;ve got a tough fight ahead&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-445257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}