Diesel AK Blog
Fighter Profile: Alexander Volkanovski
Alexander Volkanovski: UFC featherweight champion — record, title defences and current standing.
Background
Australian featherweight from Wollongong, a former professional rugby league player who now trains at Freestyle Fighting Gym. He is the reigning UFC featherweight champion with a professional record of 28-4.
Career timeline
- Won the UFC featherweight championship from Max Holloway in December 2019 and defended it repeatedly, including twice more against Holloway.
- Lost the title to Ilia Topuria by knockout in February 2024.
- Reclaimed the vacant featherweight title at UFC 314 in Miami in April 2025, outpointing Diego Lopes by unanimous decision.
- Defended it against Lopes in a rematch at UFC 325 in Sydney on 1 February 2026, winning by unanimous decision (49-46, 49-46, 50-45) in front of a home crowd at Qudos Bank Arena.
- That win tied him with José Aldo for the most UFC featherweight title defences in history, at eight. He is expected to face Movsar Evloev in late 2026.
Fight craft
Volkanovski’s defining quality is fight IQ under pressure: exceptional footwork for a short featherweight, a low centre of gravity that makes him hard to take down, and the ability to change the shape of a fight round by round. Against Lopes twice he intercepted a dangerous, aggressive opponent on the way in and simply refused to give him the grappling exchanges he needed. The one persistent risk is that he is a small fighter who takes damage to close distance, and the two knockout losses on his record both came against opponents with sharper single-shot power.
In the modern MMA landscape
Our wider MMA analysis describes this as tying Aldo for “the most featherweight title fight wins” at eight. The record he tied is for title defences. That report also calls him the oldest fighter to defend the 145lb belt; we could not corroborate that from official sources, so it has been left out here.
Return to What the Modern MMA Game Demands.
Sources
- UFC 325: Volkanovski vs Lopes 2 — main card results
- UFCStats — Alexander Volkanovski record
- Al Jazeera — Volkanovski wins featherweight title defence against Lopes at UFC 325
Record and competitive status checked 1 August 2026.
