Chael Sonnen sees UFC 314 as a do-or-die situation for Alexander Volkanovski.
Volkanovski (26-4 MMA, 13-3 UFC) meets Diego Lopes (26-6 MMA, 5-1 UFC) for the vacant featherweight title in Saturday’s main event at Kaseya Center from Miami (ESPN+ pay-per-view, ESPN/Disney+, ESPN+). While Volkanovski has an opportunity to reclaim the UFC featherweight title, a loss could also be detrimental to his career.
“Volkanovski’s name popping up with the right kind of loss, and I’m talking about if he gets laid out or he gets stopped, which is Lopes’ greatest path to victory by the way, people are going to be calling for retirement,” Sonnen said on “Good Guy/Bad Guy” with Daniel Cormier. “That’s going to give him four losses out of his last five. It’s going to be over a number of years, spreading over a couple of different weight classes.
“I don’t take a pride in that, but when I’m trying to look at it and analyze it, and think about who’s got the pressure, and pressure matters. Guys like you and I talk about pressure all the time, but we forget to explain it. The reason why that matters is pressure creates fatigue, and in a sport that’s built around exhaustion, you don’t want to be the one to get tired first. I think that Volk is not only fighting for a world title, I think he’s fighting for his career.”
Volkanovski will look to rebound after back-to-back knockout losses to UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and Ilia Topuria. After losing his featherweight title to Topuria, who later vacated the belt, Volkanovski opted to take more than a year off to recover.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 314.
