Volkanovski vs Evloev: how Evloev takes the belt at UFC 333

Yesterday I drew up the plan for Alexander Volkanovski: kick the lead leg, win the rounds at range, and let rounds four and five do what they have done for him for six years. Today is the other corner. If I'm in Movsar Evloev's corner at UFC 333 on Saturday, what do I tell him?

The short answer is already in Alexander Volkanovski's own record, and it isn't complicated. In his 18 UFC fights, one opponent has wrestled him seriously for five rounds. That was Islam Makhachev in February 2023, and every judge gave him three of the five rounds. He didn't do it by burying Volkanovski for 25 minutes. He did it with one takedown a round.

One takedown a round

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Go round by round through UFC 284 and the pattern is almost mechanical. In the first round Makhachev took Volkanovski down once, on his only attempt, and held him for 124 seconds. Volkanovski actually landed more significant strikes, 11 to 10, and lost the round on all three cards. In the second, one takedown from two attempts and 57 seconds of control, with the striking level at 19 apiece: lost on all three cards. In the fourth, one takedown, one attempt, 205 seconds on top: lost on all three cards.

Look at what that means for Evloev. Makhachev never won a round on volume. He won rounds by getting one takedown and making it stick. In the three rounds he won, he landed 3 takedowns from 4 attempts, and the champion spent 386 seconds of those 15 minutes underneath him. The striking in those rounds was 36 to 33 in Volkanovski's favor, and it didn't matter.

Evloev has never needed more than that. His UFC average is 4.78 takedowns per 15 minutes at 53 percent accuracy. Against Volkanovski he doesn't need 4.78. He needs one in each of three rounds, and he needs to stay there.

Nobody else has tried

This is the part of Volkanovski's résumé I find most remarkable. Since he beat Jose Aldo in 2019, his opponents have shot 24 takedowns at him across 12 UFC fights. Nine of those 24 came from Makhachev in one night.

That's eight takedowns in seven years. The featherweight division has spent most of that time trying to beat Volkanovski at his own game, on the feet. Ilia Topuria managed it, and so did Makhachev in their first-round rematch knockout. The other way to beat him, the one that took three rounds off him on every card, has been tried once.

Evloev's UFC career is the opposite profile. In his ten UFC fights he has attempted 97 takedowns, 9.7 a fight, and in all but one of them he shot at least twice. The exception is Mike Grundy in 2020, a wrestler who shot 15 times at Evloev and finished 6, and Evloev won that one by outlanding him 79 to 20. He adapts to wrestlers. Against strikers he wrestles.

Shoot in the first round, not the third

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The fight that worries me for Evloev is his most recent one. Against Lerone Murphy in London in March he didn't attempt a takedown in either of the first two rounds. He was outlanded 14 to 11 in the first and 24 to 17 in the second. He took the first round on two of the three cards and lost the second on all three. From the third round on he went 9 of 10 and won the fight, but he had spent ten minutes giving a striker exactly the fight the striker wanted.

That isn't how he usually starts. In eight of his ten UFC fights he landed a takedown in the first round, 16 from 31 attempts in total, and he won eight of those ten first rounds on the cards. The two first rounds he lost were Nik Lentz and Aljamain Sterling, and in Sterling's case it was because the other man wrestled better, holding him down for 169 seconds.

Volkanovski is the worst possible opponent for a slow start. In 18 UFC fights he has lost a first round on the cards twice, once to Max Holloway in their second fight and once to Makhachev, and both of those were unanimous across the three judges. (He was also knocked out inside one, in the Makhachev rematch.) A first round spent at range against Volkanovski is a round you don't get back, and in a five-round fight Evloev can't spare one.

The misses count too

There is a second reason to shoot early, and it has nothing to do with finishing the takedown. Look at Evloev's first round against Arnold Allen in January 2024: he went 2 of 9 on takedowns, was nearly even on the feet at 13 strikes to 12, and won the round anyway. In the third round against SeungWoo Choi he went 1 of 6 and won it on all three cards. In the third against Enrique Barzola, 0 of 4, and won it again.

The attempts build rounds even when they don't finish, because a man defending his hips isn't doing what he came to do. For Volkanovski, what he came to do is kick the lead leg. He landed 75 significant leg strikes on Holloway in their first fight. A fighter who has to sprawl every minute and a half doesn't get to set those kicks up, and each kick he does throw is a chance for Evloev to catch it and change levels. The worst version of this fight for Evloev is one where Volkanovski gets to pick his kicks. Shooting is how you take that choice away.

Don't stop in the fifth

Photo: MMAnytt / CC BY 3.0

Back to Makhachev, because the last round of that fight is the warning. In the fifth he tried two takedowns, landed neither, and Volkanovski spent 93 seconds on top of him, outlanded him 20 to 8, scored a knockdown and won the round on every card. The moment the wrestling stopped working, the champion took over. He has done that to people all career. Across his seven five-round decisions he has outlanded opponents by about nine significant strikes a round in rounds one through three, and by more than fourteen a round in the fourth and fifth.

Evloev has one 25-minute fight to go on, but it's the right kind of evidence. Against Murphy he got stronger as the fight went on: 3 of 4 on takedowns in the fourth round, then 5 of 5 in the fifth with 132 seconds of control. If he wrestles the fifth round on Saturday the way he wrestled the fifth in London, the comeback round Volkanovski usually owns never really starts.

The plan, on one card

If I'm writing it on a whiteboard in the back room at Etihad Arena: shoot in the first minute, not the fifth. One finished takedown a round is enough, as long as it sticks. Shoot even when it won't land, because every sprawl is a calf kick he didn't throw. Win three rounds, not five. And whatever the second-round score is, shoot in the fifth.

Our model gives Evloev 66.5 percent, the sportsbooks have it at even money, and 62.5 percent of the people on our UFC 333 pick'em are on the champion. None of that will matter if Evloev comes out the way he did against Murphy. The question I'd want answered by the first horn is simple: has he shot yet?

The full card and start times are in our UFC 333 viewing guide.