UFC: Alex Volkanovski says AJ McKee’s title loss ‘makes me chuckle’ after Bellator star’s taunts
- UFC featherweight champion says ‘you can’t hate on these guys’ for trying to ‘hype things up and promote themselves’
- ‘But sometimes it makes you laugh when things don’t go to plan when they run their mouth like that,’ Volkanovski adds
Alex Volkanovski may not have taken a full-blown victory lap, but he certainly got the last laugh after AJ McKee lost his Bellator featherweight title.
The 27-year-old American (18-1) surrendered the belt he won from Patricio “Pitbull” Freire back to the Brazilian on April 15, suffering his first professional defeat.
The unanimous decision loss came after McKee had taunted UFC featherweight champ Volkanovski (24-1). He said he “wasn’t impressed” by the Australian’s victory against “The Korean Zombie” Jung Chan-sung at UFC 273, and criticised Volkanovski for not responding to his call-outs for a cross-promotional fight.
“I didn’t see it because I was on the [victory] tour and I was busy. But yeah, the only reason I knew about it is because people said he was saying this and that, and then I got told he lost,” Volkanovski told the Post at his team’s new Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA gym in Phuket.
“It just makes me chuckle in a sense, but at the same time you can’t hate on these guys or what that’s a part of. They want to hype things up and build themselves up. It’s promotion, it’s marketing, it’s how some people approach it.
“So you can’t hate them for it. It’s just a job they think they need to do, but sometimes it makes you laugh when things don’t go to plan when they run their mouth like that.”
