UFc featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski has been training with some unorthodox partners of late. That’s not to say he’s been sparring southpaws: rather, Alexander “The Great” was recently snapped training with YouTuber-turned-boxer Logan Paul.
Their training session was about more than just Volkanokvsi’s lucrative Prime sponsorship, with Volkanovski backing Logan Paul’s chops for a future UFC appearance.
Alexander Volkanovski Backs Logan Paul vs Paddy Pimblett UFC Match
“Obviously he does more boxing. He did a bit of wrestling, I hear people say. But yeah, you see he’s obviously strong and knew what he was doing.
He still had that body awareness. But yeah, he’s even thinking of maybe doing something — I’m hearing him talking about coming and doing the UFC thing and all of that. But he’s got the boxing and then he’s got a bit of wrestling credentials, so that’ll be definitely interesting. I think he could it.”
As for an opponent, Volkanovski wants to see Logan Paul fight one of the promotion’s hottest rising stars, Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett.
“You’ve got the size factor in there. I think chucking straight into a middleweight UFC-caliber fight wouldn’t be pretty fair [for Paul], but I think maybe a Paddy Pimblett or something, I think that’ll work.”
Volkanokvsi also wants to train another strange partner: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who may at some point fight Tesla’s head honcho Elon Musk.
“I’m telling you, I think it’s legit, so we might make something happen. I actually think it’s going to [happen]. Like, there’s so many reasons why it can’t happen, but then you see these guys commit to anything, like, they’re going to do it.
They’re pretty much committed to it. Do you reckon these guys would be where they are if they didn’t commit to something that they promised themselves or it was something they said?
So I think it’s going to happen. And I’m telling you, Zuck’s competitive. We know he’s already competed in jiu-jitsu, and he’s pretty athletic.
He gets in there and I guess loves challenging himself, and this is going to be a challenge, something new, something exciting.
And I think it could happen. Get me on that card though. I want to be on that card. I’ll help corner and be on that card as well.”
Volkanovski also backs Zuckerberg’s game, calling it “well-rounded”. “He’s well-rounded.
Like I said, he does it all. He does the striking and then he does the grappling. I think he’s competed — obviously he does a little bit more, he’s probably a lot more competitive on the ground.
You’ve got to be a little bit more careful on the feet, especially with these clever guys, they don’t want to be sparring and getting punched in the head, especially with the brains that they have.
So I think they’re going to do a lot more grappling, so he’s going to have a lot more experience grappling, because that’s something that he can obviously be a bit more competitive with.”
