Brian Ortega had done it. He had won the UFC featherweight championship. Midway through the third round of his title fight with Alexander Volkanovski, after being outclassed on the feet for the entirety of the bout, Ortega had surprised and dropped Volkanovski with a straight right hand out of nowhere, and pounced with a mounted guillotine choke.
The guillotine was as tight as they come. Volkanovski’s head turned purple. He kicked and thrashed, seemingly futilely, and it was just a matter of moments before the champion went unconscious. It was a wrap. But at the final instant – the belt halfway around Ortega’s waist – Volkanovski somehow popped his head out.
Alexander Volkanovski had faced down his own mortality. His first UFC loss, the loss of his title, was staring him in the face. Brian Ortega was a hair away from choking him unconscious. And that just pissed Volkanovski off.
In his entire UFC career, we’d never seen Volkanovski in a truly desperate hour. We had seen him in very close fights – Max Holloway, the other great featherweight of this generation, took him down to the wire twice – but those were tactical chess matches, bouts that came down to skill more than will. On Saturday night, Volkanovski had to battle with every single fiber of his being just to stay alive.
But, as it turns out, Alexander Volkanovski is an even stronger man, and an even greater champion, than we could have known. In that third round – which will go down as one of the most heart-stopping rounds of mixed martial arts ever – Volkanovski nearly was put unconscious by that mounted guillotine, and also had to narrowly survive a dangerous triangle choke attempt that nearly ensnared him about a minute later. He nearly lost not once, but twice. He still won the round.
Ortega’s moment came as a shock, as Volkanovski had controlled the entirety of the first half of the fight, and seemed to be growing only more confident and comfortable in the third. We knew Volkanovski – an excellent technical stand-up fighter – would have a major advantage on the feet against Ortega, a one-shot-at-a-time striker better known for his exceptionally dangerous submission skills. Volk sensed this too, and we saw him emboldened to attack, to go right after Ortega and box him up.
And Ortega nearly taking his belt seemingly only energized him and took him to a new level of violence. I have never seen Alexander Volkanovski fight angry the way he did in the later moments of the fight on Saturday. Volkanovski battered Ortega brutally with ground-and-pound, beating him absolutely senseless to the point where the fight really could have been stopped after that third round.
Ortega looked a mess. And while the challenger somehow rallied to bring the fight back to Volkanovski in the fifth round, the fight had been put well out of reach, solely by how Volkanovski responded to adversity greater than anything he’s ever encountered before. We knew that Volkanovski had a remarkable mind for the sport, but he also can get mean when it’s time to get mean. And at his meanest, it turns out that Alexander Volkanovski is terrifying.
But the incredible comeback feat that Volkanovski pulled off on Wednesday, surviving situations that seemed impossible, will rightly elevate him to a different tier of star. Volkanovski is a deserving champion, but he hasn’t always received the credit he’s earned as one of the very top fighters in the world – Holloway maintains a much stronger fanbase, and many believe that Holloway deserved to win the rematch.
But there can be no doubt anymore that Volkanovski is a superstar of the highest order, one of those rare talents with something special down inside of him. What’s less clear is what all this means for Ortega. He’s clearly one of the top featherweights in the world, but he’s eaten horrid beatings in separate title challenges against Holloway and Volkanovski, the kinds that can alter and shorten a career.
Holloway and Yair Rodriguez will meet up in about a month and a half, with the winner likely to challenge Volkanovski for the title. Holloway-Volkanovski III, despite the fact that Volk won the first two, appears the fight to make and would be the biggest of his career. And now, we’ve learned a little something more about the world champion. He’s not just a thinker. He’s a killer. And in turn, he’s a man who cannot be killed.
The Big Fight 