![]() The ill-fated submission attempt gave the Australian the opening he needed, as he landed vicious right hands on his opponent for a TKO stoppage. “And it’s helping a lot, it’s definitely a lot better, but at the same time, family’s not cheap so I need to fight regularly, and I want to shoot through these ranks so I can start making some serious money.”Īfter over four years spent amassing a 13-1 record on the Australian circuit, and a dogged #SignVolkanovski social media campaign, Volkanovski’s big break finally came: a debut against Yusuke Kasuya at UFC Melbourne: Brunson vs Whittaker on November 27, 2016.Īfter some back and forth grappling exchanges in the first, Volkanovski’s Japanese opponent went face down for a leg lock in the second round. I was living at my mum’s house and then I finally got that UFC contract,” said Volkanovski. I really wanted to get into the UFC and we sort of put life on hold until that happened. “Especially before the UFC it was much harder, I was chasing the dream. Things are better now, though putting food on the table remains a key motivator for him. “That’s when I decided, we’re finishing in a good year, we won the final, I scored a try, won Man of the Match, and I made the decision to go to MMA and take MMA seriously and it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made.”īut for the 99.9% of fighters who haven’t made the elite level, how seriously you take MMA is inversely related to your financial security.įor Volkanovski, married and a father of two daughters aged two years and eight weeks old, cash flow took a temporary back seat as he tried to crack the UFC roster. I was a (legendary Australian rugby player) Mick Cronin medalist, and Man of the Match in the last year of football, and I had a couple of fights that year,” he said. They call them ‘props,’ one of the guys that just runs straight at people pretty much. “(When I played rugby) I was a 97 kilogram front-rower. But Volkanovski, who would soon transform into a smothering grappler with brutal ground-and-pound, knew he had what it took to become an elite MMA fighter. The up and comer, who made his professional MMA debut in 2012, figured he’d gone as far as he could in rugby. Then working as a concreter in the family business and earning a modest income as a first grade rugby league player for the Warilla Gorillas on the New South Wales South Coast, Volkanovski soon had to pick between his two sports. And that’s sort of where I thought this ain’t too bad, I’m taking out these guys that think they’re good and that was probably where I was like, I think I’ve got it.” And he never set foot in our gym ever again. “And I just remember absolutely smashing him, I was all over him (laughs). And this was the first grapple I’d ever done, and he’d been doing it for a little while, he might have even been a blue belt,” said the native of Shellharbour, New South Wales, Australia. “The next day, that same guy was there, and I remember we had grappling. While that proved too much for his opponent’s ego, it signaled to Volkanovski that he had a future in his new sport. I sort of brushed it off, I could’ve turned around and never done an MMA fight or trained MMA at all, but I didn’t really care and just went in.”īut when Volkanovski turned up for his first class at the Freestyle Fighting Gym the next day, he wasn’t the one being smashed. I remember there was a guy at my school, he was a bit older, he looks at me and goes ‘What are you doing here? You’re going to get smashed.’ This is before I even walked in the door. And I was going to do it more for pre-season (for rugby). “I remember walking in, this was the first time I ever went into my coach’s gym. ![]() Unbeknownst to his taunter, he’d also won a national championship in wrestling as a teen, although he’d quit the sport around ten years prior to play rugby. Strange, considering that this was in 2011, when he was still a 213-pound rugby league player. The story of UFC featherweight Alexander “The Great” Volkanovski, who fights Shane Young this Saturday (Sunday local time) at UFC Fight Night: Werdum vs Tybura at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, is the opposite.īefore he even stepped foot in what would later become his home gym, Volkanovski was targeted as fresh meat. ![]() Many fighters fall in love with MMA after getting beat up on their first day of training, consumed by wanting to learn whatever magic their opponent used to dominate them.
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