Alexander Volkanovski is relieved he didn't have to fight Islam Makhachev at UFC 280 for the lightweight title, declaring their upcoming bout is the "best case scenario".
The Australian has yet to pen a deal for a bout with Makhachev that would see him compete for gold in his second division in the UFC, but has already begun training with a February date in his home country the ideal scenario. The pair shared a heated face-off after Makhachev won the belt from Charles Oliveira in Abu Dhabi last month and will likely headline UFC 284 in Perth.
Volkanovski is the current featherweight champion, and is also ranked No.1 pound-for-pound in the world by the promotion. He has never lost under the UFC banner, and with wins over all the top contenders at 145lb, he has started restructuring his camp in an effort to move up in weight.
He had gone to Makhachev's fight with Oliveira as the official main event back-up fighter, and made weight at 155lb despite not ending up getting on the card. And now the promotion are rewarding him with an immediate world title effort in his first fight at the weight since 2016.
'It's not all signed and locked in like that," Volkanovski told Mirror Fighting during an exclusive chat in New York, where he is supporting teammate Israel Adesanya at UFC 281. "But that's still the plan, it's still what I'm pushing for and I still think that's definitely what's going to happen and I'm committed to it. The story is there and that's why I went over there and did what I had to do.
"Obviously I had a short camp, didn't know who I was fighting but I was happy to take all of that risk and commit to that knowing that I would be next in line. And then I had the face-off call-out from Khabib [Nurmagomedov] and Islam, it just sets up for a big fight in Perth. I can't say too much on it because it isn't signed, but let's put it this way; we're going to make sure that it happens."
Volkanovski had broken his hand as recently as July when he faced the legendary former champion Max Holloway in a trilogy bout. But he insisted that he was able to compete last month, less than three months later, and took the spot of Beneil Dariush as the man who would step in if the main event were to fall apart.
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But by February, he will be completely healthy with a full camp, which will be necessary to hand Makhachev just his second career loss. He will also have home advantage in Perth, and claims that the circumstances that led to his upcoming lightweight title fight was "perfect".
"The perfect world is exactly how this has worked out," he continued. "That's how we wanted it. We wanted to go there, soak up a lot of the atmosphere and be amongst it all. I had some stuff prepared and I trained hard just in case I had to step in, but we would rather them fight, get a champion and then me fight in Perth which is exactly what happened.
"Now I'm fully committing to this; the strength programmes and diet plans, wrestling coaches are involved early before camp starts. I've never really had to work on the takedown defence because I've always been so good at it, but now that I'm going to be putting a lot more attention to it, trust me, I'm getting back to my feet.
"Let's see how good his stand-up is! That's what I'm going to do. People are going to say 'will he be able to stop the takedowns?' Don't worry, I'm getting back to my feet and everyone can say he's well rounded - let's see how well rounded he is because I'm going to test him on the feet and we'll see what happens."
