“Yes, in the end we invited a sambo wrestler,” said the Australian in an interview with Michael Bisping. “There was a whole story, I won’t go into details – eventually this guy arrived, but he was not too respectful in the negotiations. In fact, we invited him to teach him a lesson.”
“I don’t usually do that, but this time when he started saying, ‘you need to do this, you need to do that’, I showed him very quickly that we didn’t need anything. I don’t usually do this in training, but this time I had to prove something. It wasn’t just me. Some of our guys also showed him what’s what. We’re like, ‘Do we really need you? Calm down and be quiet.’ We sort of taught him a lesson.”
Having demonstrated his superiority over the invited sparring partner, Alex Volkanovski will try to repeat his success in the confrontation with basic sambist Islam Makhachev, whom he will meet on February 12 at UFC 284 in Perth. At stake in the superfight will be the UFC lightweight championship belt belonging to the Russian, and the Australian will risk the status of the best fighter of the organization, regardless of the weight category.