Current UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski isn't giving much thought at the moment to the idea of a potential matchup with former two-division UFC champion Henry Cejudo.
Volkanovski spoke with The All Star's John Hyon Ko and gave his thoughts on why he feels the Cejudo fight isn't a real option at the moment or a fight that benefits him all that much as well.
“The UFC ain’t taking him serious,” Volkanovski said. “I guarantee the UFC isn’t paying him what he wants. If he is fighting, the bargaining hasn’t gone in his favor at all. And he’s just fighting for whatever contract he was already originally on. The UFC isn’t throwing anything to me so I’m not going to waste my time by pretending to hype it up. It’s a win-win situation for him if he goes to the featherweight division and fights me. He loses….does that look that bad on his end? Not really. Even though we’re not that far apart in size cause I’m pretty small for a featherweight anyway. But at the end of the day, people are gonna be it’s a featherweight beating a flyweight-bantamweight. That doesn’t help my legacy at all. His legacy if he wins, that’s huge. If he loses, it doesn’t affect much because I feel like he’s expected to lose.”
He did however continue on to say that if Cejudo were to unretire and return to the UFC, and was able to regain his 135-pound title that Volkanovski then would consider the fight more seriously.
“He’s been retired. You go out there and prove yourself in the bantamweight division, take that belt back again, which is going to be a hard one because Petr Yan ain’t no joke,” Volkanovski said. “You go and do that, then I think he deserves to push in front of the line. One hundred percent. Because he’s active again and he goes out, takes it. Now he can go for double champ. You can’t sit there, retired, and expect to come back and just jump in front of the line. That just doesn’t really work. The timing has to be perfect. As in, there is no one else. The UFC throws him my way. We make it. We get the paycheck. Alright, let’s go do this just for the sake of it. For the sake of a paycheck. Go out there and do a lot of people a favor by beating up the cringe as well.”
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