{"id":597005,"date":"2026-04-10T02:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T02:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/597005\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T02:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T02:51:08","slug":"steve-garcia-aims-to-dethrone-and-retire-alexander-volkanovski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/597005\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Garcia aims to dethrone and retire Alexander Volkanovski"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Garcia wants to prove that UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski<\/a> is no longer the same fighter.<\/p>\n

After an impressive seven-fight winning streak, Garcia (19-5 MMA, 8-2 UFC) draws former title challenger Diego Lopes<\/a> (27-8 MMA, 6-3 UFC) at UFC Freedom 250 on June 14 from the White House in Washington, D.C. (Paramount+<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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If he can get past Lopes, Garcia has his sights set on Volkanovski, who’s coming off a definitive second title win over Lopes at UFC 325<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I’m calling for that strap,” Garcia said on Smash Cast<\/a>. “Give me that strap, that’s what I want. Honestly, I feel like Volk should retire because if he doesn’t, I’m going to retire him. That’s what’s going through my head right now.<\/p>\n

“But again, I’ve got a huge, tall task ahead of me. I’m not going to look past Diego Lopes. That would be stupid to do it, but in my head, every time I see Volk, I’m like, he’s not the Volk of old. He’s not, and there are ways to beat this guy, and if I can get to him, I can do it.”<\/p>\n

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Volkanovski’s only UFC losses have come to current welterweight champion Islam Makhachev twice and lightweight champion Ilia Topuria<\/a>. “The Great” was able to rebound from back-to-back knockout losses against Makhachev and Topuria with two-straight wins over prolific finisher Lopes.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Steve Garcia’s goal is to retire UFC champion Alexander Volkanovski<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Garcia wants to prove that UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski is no longer the same fighter. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[34341,64,63,44864,786,785,85,3167,787,291384],"class_list":["post-597005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-alexander-volkanovski","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-diego-lopes","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-steve-garcia","tag-ufc","tag-volk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597005","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=597005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}