Beaten Russian\u2019s classy tribute to \u2018legend\u2019<\/a><\/p>\nEvloev is known as the \u2018Decision King\u2019 for good reason: in ten previous fights in the Octagon, all wins, he had forced the judges to decide after the full five rounds.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t even come close to 25 minutes in Abu Dhabi, with Volkanovski taking charge from the beginning of the second round and capitalising ruthlessly after flooring him with a heavy left hand.<\/p>\n
It was widely expected that a defeat in UFC 333 would bring an end to the Australian\u2019s Hall of Fame-worthy mixed martial arts career.<\/p>\n
But a triumph of this magnitude will see Volk continue to write his own scripts for a while to come yet, with Father Time forced to wait for at least one more fight.<\/p>\n
The possibility of a showdown with another UFC veteran in Justin Gaethje, at 37 just one year younger than the icon from down under, is now tantalising.<\/p>\n
The lightweight great is yet to officially retire, but has been adamant that he has nothing left to prove in the arena, with his management team seeking legacy-enhancing bouts over rematches or other challenges.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t come much bigger than a showdown with Volkanovski \u2013 especially now.<\/p>\n
All the big knockouts from UFC 333! | 02:48<\/p>\n
And having produced a \u201cflu game\u201d worthy of Jordan, the Australian is more than willing to make a \u201clast dance\u201d happen too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t heard him (Gaethje) saying anything about it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cObviously he\u2019s enjoying himself, doing his thing. I don\u2019t want to disrupt him too much. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut hey, if you are thinking of doing something like that, if we wanted to retire together, superfight, have a bit of fun, let the divisions do their thing, we can go save the last dance with each other and get stuck into it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuper fight to end the careers, I\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going into UFC 333, Dana White said he would be \u201cvery supportive\u201d of a Volk-Gaethje superfight should both prove willing.<\/p>\n
And if White\u2019s post-fight comments are any indication, he believes Volkanovski truly deserves the chance to bow out in style.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy is an absolute stud,\u201d White said during his press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing in and beating an undefeated, younger (man) … Volkanovski is incredible.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the aggressive fighter, he was the one really going after him (Evloev) and trying to finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis guy\u2019s f***ing built different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volk beats down unbeaten rival! | 00:30<\/p>\n
Volkanovski, meanwhile, doubled down on his comments to Main Event in his post-fight press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an honest guy and I want it to be fair,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times I\u2019m like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to hold the divisions up\u2019 but if I believe we can do this and not hold the divisions up, whether it\u2019s both our retirement fights and put it all on the line, it\u2019d be cool. A little bit of a superfight. <\/p>\n
\u201c38-year-olds going at it and just leave it all. That\u2019s something I\u2019d retire for. If they wanted to give me that opportunity, I would retire \u2014 a win or lose retire and then vacate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Jordan\u2019s flu game – you have company. After his stunning TKO win over Movsar Evloev to retain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":940082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,85],"class_list":["post-940081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940081","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=940081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/940082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}