{"id":27566,"date":"2025-07-27T09:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T09:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/27566\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T09:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T09:45:08","slug":"alexander-volkanovski-responds-to-1-million-bet-callout-from-emerging-ufc-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/27566\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski responds to $1 million bet callout from emerging UFC star"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alexander Volkanovski has begun another run at featherweight after beating Diego Lopez for the vacant belt.<\/p>\n

After an unsuccessful bid at pound-for-pound star Islam Makhachev, who was warned by Jack Della Maddalena of a welterweight move<\/a>, Volk has now regained his spot at the top of the featherweight mountain.<\/p>\n

But he will be looking at climbing the P4P rankings and taking the best fights in the division to move ahead of Alexandre Pantoja or even Dricus Du Plessis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AlexanderPhoto by Mike Roach\/Zuffa LLC<\/p>\n

As the champion of his division, new UFC<\/a> stars have put their hats in the ring to face off with \u2018The Great\u2019 next.<\/p>\n

Alexander Volkanovski dismisses Patricio Pitbull and his $1 million bet call out<\/p>\n

One name that has been outspoken since his Bellator days is recent debutant Patricio Pitbull, who lost his first fight against Yair Rodriguez but won his last bout against Daniel Ige.<\/p>\n

Volkanovski has now responded to comments made by Pitbull about betting $1 million on a fight between the two.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the FreeStylebender channel, he said: \u201cPitbull would\u2019ve been exciting, I don\u2019t want to be disrespectful, but it\u2019s funny when people always act like you\u2019re running from them, like I\u2019ve never cared.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t being a d- -k, show me something and I\u2019ll take you seriously because I know that isn\u2019t going to happen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need to be talking $1 million and all this, you\u2019ve got a tough guy in front of you, I\u2019m like you\u2019re lucky the million thing didn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked by Israel Adesanya, who once brutally KO\u2019d Robert Whittaker<\/a>, what the bet was all about, he explained: \u201cHe comes in and he\u2019s like you still want to do this million\u2026 Pitbull was saying we both put a million dollars up; he was saying that he was over there in Bellator.<\/p>\n

Now, the MMA legend is not entertaining the bout unless Patricio can produce something to get him excited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think people are trying to dodge you, they probably have bigger things on their plate.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou lost, and now I won\u2019t waste my time again\u2026 I\u2019ll take it seriously when you are almost there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander Volkanovski should fight winner of Lerone Murphy vs Aaron Pico<\/p>\n

It was announced on the UFC Abu Dhabi broadcast that Movsar Evloev has had to withdraw from the UFC 319 co-main event against Aaron Pico, a British star on an eight-fight win streak, who has stepped up.<\/p>\n

Lerone Murphy has flown through the featherweight rankings to number six, and a win for him will easily make him a favourite to compete for the title.<\/p>\n

However, his opponent Pico is making his UFC debut after a successful run in Bellator, and an upset here places him as a problem for the top contenders.<\/p>\n

The difference maker for Murphy in this fight is his precision striking, with a 54% strike accuracy so far.<\/p>\n

While a shame to lose an intriguing co-main clash, Dana White\u2019s promotion has served up another interesting styles clash between two young contenders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Volkanovski has begun another run at featherweight after beating Diego Lopez for the vacant belt. After an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,640],"class_list":["post-27566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}