Alexander Volkanovski hit the mats with a few famous friends ahead of UFC 290.
The reigning UFC featherweight champion faces interim champ Yair Rodriguez in a title unification match in Saturday’s main event. Back in June, however, Volkanovski paused his training camp to make a pit stop in Puerto Rico, where he trained with Logan Paul. The session was part of an announcement for the sponsorship deal between Paul’s PRIME Hydration company and Volkanovski, and the 145-pound king came away impressed.
“Obviously he does more boxing. He did a bit of wrestling, I hear people say. But yeah, you see he’s obviously strong and knew what he was doing,” Volkanovski said of Paul when asked about their training session on The MMA Hour. “He still had that body awareness. But yeah, he’s even thinking of maybe doing something — I’m hearing him talking about coming and doing the UFC thing and all of that. But he’s got the boxing and then he’s got a bit of wrestling credentials, so that’ll be definitely interesting. I think he could it.”
Paul is no stranger to combat sports. The internet influencer memorably boxed Floyd Mayweather in an exhibition match and works regularly for the WWE. Paul has long flirted with transitioning to the MMA world as well, with his latest flirtation coming this past week when he asked to make his MMA debut against Paddy Pimblett on the undercard of the potential battle of the billionaires between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
Paul declared he’d fight for free on any potential Zuckerberg vs. Musk card and called upon UFC President Dana White to give him Pimblett to “wallop” as his debut opponent.
After training with Paul, Volkanovski likes the matchup.
“You’ve got the size factor in there,” Volkanovski said of Paul vs. Pimblett. “I think chucking straight into a middleweight UFC-caliber fight wouldn’t be pretty fair [for Paul], but I think maybe a Paddy Pimblett or something, I think that’ll work.”
If that card ever does come together, Volkanovski will have plenty of insight into its bizarre main event as well.
Volkanovski trained with Zuckerberg this past February as part of a showcase of the Metaverse. Once again, Volkanovski came away impressed with what he saw. Not only does he like Zuckerberg’s chances of beating Musk, he also thinks the fight happens.
“I’m telling you, I think it’s legit, so we might make something happen,” Volkanovski said when asked if he’ll help train Zuckerberg for a potential Musk fight.
“I actually think it’s going to [happen]. Like, there’s so many reasons why it can’t happen, but then you see these guys commit to anything, like, they’re going to do it. They’re pretty much committed to it. Do you reckon these guys would be where they are if they didn’t commit to something that they promised themselves or it was something they said? So I think it’s going to happen. And I’m telling you, Zuck’s competitive.
“We know he’s already competed in jiu-jitsu, and he’s a pretty athletic. He get in there and I guess loves challenging himself, and this is going to be a challenge, something new, something exciting. And I think it could happen. Get me on that card though. I want to be on that card. I’ll help corner and be on that card as well.”
If the fight does happen, Zuckerberg will need to overcome a significant size disadvantage — the Meta CEO is both shorter and significantly lighter than Musk.
But Volkanovski is confident that Zuckerberg has the skill set to get the job done.
“He’s well-rounded,” Volkanovski said. “Like I said, he does it all. He does the striking and then he does the grappling. I think he’s compete — obviously he does a little bit more, he’s probably a lot more competitive on the ground. You’ve got to be a little bit more careful on the feet, especially with these clever guys, they don’t want to be sparring and getting punched in the head, especially with the brains that they have. So I think they’re going to do a lot more grappling, so he’s going to have a lot more experience grappling, because that’s something that he can obviously be a bit more competitive with.”