Sitting up there in their final press conference before they head off to America for UFC 298, Alex Volkanovski and Rob Whittaker sure looked the same as ever.
They sounded the same as well and said all the right things. Volkanovski pledged to derail the hype train behind Spanish challenger Ilia Topuria in their featherweight title clash.
“Everyone has a puncher’s chance, but I think that’s all he’s got,” Volkanovski said.
“He’s young, he’s dangerous, he’s got a lot of hype around him, but that’s going to end.
“He thinks he’s the best, but he’s going to be shown that there are levels to this. You have to earn your stripes and he hasn’t been in there with the best.”
Whittaker was a little more bloodthirsty, promising a world of pain for Brazilian middleweight Paulo Costa.
“I’m coming into this fight hungrier than ever. I want to bring the animal back,” Whittaker said.
“I don’t just want to win, I want to hurt Costa and I think that’s a powerful mentality to have.”
It could have been business as usual were it not for what happened to the duo in their last fights. It wasn’t that they both lost — though that’s rare for Whittaker and damn near unheard for Volkanovski — it was how they lost.
Volkanovski’s lights were turned out courtesy of a head kick from lightweight champion Islam Makhachev midway through the first round of their rematch. It was his first knockout defeat in 10 years and just the third loss of his career.
The beating Whittaker copped was a little more sustained, less precise and more wild. He was warmly favoured to handle Dricus du Plessis but instead succumbed to the powerful South African en route to a second round defeat.
Whittaker has been knocked out before, including when he lost the middleweight title to Israel Adesanya back in 2019, but this was different.
It was sloppy and brutal and hard and given the wars Whittaker has been through in his career there’s a school of thought that he’s reached a turning point where all the battles of the past finally begin to take their toll.
So while Volkanovski and Whittaker sound the same and look the same and their preparation for UFC 298 feels the same, Australia’s two greatest MMA exports are rebuilding.
A knockout defeat, particularly a thunderous one, shatters a career apart. Putting it back together is difficult, but possible.
Volkanovski faces the harder path. Topuria is the best fighter he’s faced at featherweight since his rivalry with Max Holloway, the loss to Makhachev was just a few months ago and at 35 he’s at an age where declines can be swift, sudden and brutal.
He insists he isn’t dwelling on his last defeat and if it does change him it will be for the better.
“Unless I’m getting asked about (the Makhachev loss) it I’m not thinking about it,” Volkanovski said.
“It’s just how I am, even when I win I quickly forget about it and I’m back in the gym. I try and be better when I win and better when I lose.
“I don’t want to just be better than the person standing in front of me, I want to be better than the last time I was in there.”
It’s the right thing to say and the right mentality for a champion. But it’s another thing to put them to the test against a hungry contender like Topuria. Volkanovski has the game to record his sixth title defence.
The desperation of a challenger is no easy thing to reckon with, a lesson Whittaker was reminded of in his loss to du Plessis.
“I’m always an animal in fights and I’m always ready to fight. You fight for so long and you have changes in your life, sometimes all it takes is loosening the reigns a little bit when you fight these hungry dudes,” Whittaker said.
“I think I underestimated that hunger. I still believe I beat him nine times out of ten, I still believe that I’m a better fighter than him and have a better skill set than he does.
“But a big, strong guy with that hunger? You need to match that and I didn’t do that.”
Whittaker is the favourite against Costa and conventional wisdom says he’ll be too slick, composed and varied in his striking to lose to the wild Brazilian.
But Costa, like du Plessis, is big, powerful and unorthodox. Whittaker is not just fighting to re-stablish himself in the title race, but to reforge his career.
One loss can be a explained away, but two is a streak and streaks have a way of getting away from a fighter, even one as good as Whittaker.
Both Whittaker and Volkanovski could retire tomorrow as greats of the sport. Their legacy is beyond reproach and cannot be changed.
But if they both want to strive forward and confirm their knockout losses really were temporary blips rather than demarcation points in their careers, there’s only one way to prove it.
“The best way to make amends is to get back on the horse, Whittaker said.
“The only way to prove everyone wrong is to get a win.”
