There have been 19 featherweight title fights in UFC history since the promotion crowned then-World Extreme Cagefighting champion Jose Aldo as its 145-pound title-holder in 2010. That does not include bouts that were solely for an interim title.
The younger fighter has won 13 of those 19 bouts, and a fighter who was over 35 in a featherweight title bout has never won, going 0-2.
Alex Volkanovski is the UFC's featherweight champion, and has been since defeating Max Holloway for the first of three times on Dec. 14, 2019, in Las Vegas. He turned 35 on Sept. 29, 1988, and will be fighting at featherweight for the first time since that momentous birthday when he defends his belt Saturday in the main event of UFC 298 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., against unbeaten Ilia Topuria.
Volkanovski is 6-0 in featherweight title bouts, with three wins over Holloway and individual victories over Brian Ortega, Chan Sung-Jung aka "The Korean Zombie" and Yair Rodriguez. Volkanovski was younger than Jung but older than all of his other featherweight title opponents in the UFC.
Volkanovski is 5-0 as the younger man and 1-0 as the older man in featherweight title fights. Removing his bouts from the equation, the younger man would be 12-1 in featherweight title fights.
No fighter 35 and over has ever won a title fight from lightweight on down in the UFC, so the odds are stacked against Volkanovski as he meets the unbeaten 27-year-old Topuria. Draft Kings has Volkanovski as a -130 favorite to snap that skid, while Topuria is +110.
Topuria has already been calling himself the champion and has changed his record on his social media from 14-0 to 15-0. Volkanovski has been around long enough not to let trash talk bother him. But Topuria's words haven't gone unnoticed.
"I'm not angry at the fact that he's doing it," Volkanovski said of Topuria's outlandish claims. "But it's my competitiveness and just how I am where it annoys me to where like, I have always believed in earning things rather than things being given to you. He hasn't earned any of that. The way he's talking, he hasn't earned any of it. So as a competitor, that's just not how I roll. And it just makes me more confident in what I'm going to do."
That's because of the way he prepares himself. While he's still active, he's taking advantage of every opportunity and not only is one of the promotion's most active champions, he's continually seeking out the biggest challenges. He's in the gym only days after he turns home from a fight.
And as he listens to Topuria speak, a thought crosses his mind: He's not doing what I'm doing.
"I don't care how good you look in the gym," Volkanovski said. "I known when shit don't go your way, or you put yourself in adversity, well, I think [he] just lives a totally different lifestyle than me and that ain't going to be enough. That's why I am going to go out there and show him what's up and then walk through this guy. I don't hate the guy, but maybe it's just going to his head. He's probably a good kid, but if he wants to be a great champion one day, he needs me to do what I'm going to do this weekend. Maybe then he'll bounce back in a very positive way."
Volkanovski, who is ranked No. 3 pound-for-pound by both KevinIole.com and the UFC, returns to featherweight after a disappointing result against Islam Makhachev in a rematch for the lightweight title on Oct. 21 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in the main event of UFC 294. He was knocked out in the first round of that bout.
That happens in sports, and Volkanovski can accept that. But he's disappointed because he didn't give himself the best chance to win. In the days before he was contacted to be the last-minute replacement, he hadn't been living the Spartan lifestyle that he had essentially lived ever since he'd turned pro. He had defended his title in July by stopping Yair Rodriguez and then had surgery.
As he was recovering, he allowed himself to get off the plan and he was drinking several days in a row. And what bothers him most is that he didn't put himself in the best position to win, as hard as that was going to be to do fighting an opponent the caliber of Makhachev on 11 days' notice.
"Everyone who knows who I am knows I'm disciplined all year round," he said. "Like, don't get me wrong: I'll have drinks here and there, but I've never been a big drinker. I've never drank more than one or two nights in a row. You know what I mean? I think it was just a bit of pressure with the newborn, the injury and other little things, just life shit.
"If I had a feeling that I might be backing up or might be getting a call up, I'd have been in the gym more but I did not think that was happening at all. I was completely like, 'What? Are you serious?' when they told me. I said let's do it. ... I was just disappointed with that unprofessional version of myself that I've never seen before."
That guy has been long gone and hasn't been anywhere in this camp.
And Volkanovski fully expects that because of that, he'll be the first featherweight over 35 to ever win a title fight in the UFC.