The Bottom Line: Still in the Shadow

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Trilogies in the Ultimate Fighting Championship have been rare. Rarer still are trilogy fights where the same fighter won the first two bouts. There’s good reason for that. Once one fighter has bested the other twice, there rarely feels like there is much left to resolve. Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock fought three times, with Ortiz winning all three, only because some fans thought the Ortiz stoppage in the second bout was premature. Frankie Edgar beat B.J. Penn three times because Penn stubbornly insisted on it in what was hoped to be his final fight. Sadly, it wasn’t even the midpoint of his career-ending losing streak.

In the case of Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway, who fight for the third time in the UFC 276 co-main event on Saturday in Las Vegas, there remains plenty left to resolve. Obviously, Holloway still wants to prove he’s better than Volkanovski after being on the losing end of two competitive decisions. These are the two clear top featherweights of their era, with different styles but similar levels of in-cage excellence. Volkanovski is the single biggest possible resume builder for Holloway.

Some might view this third fight as significantly less important for Volkanovski than Holloway. After all, Volkanovski has already beaten Holloway twice. What more could Volkanovski prove? What is there left to gain from winning this matchup again? However, this line of reasoning completely misses the stakes of this fight for Volkanovski. It rests on an unpleasant and perhaps even unjust reality: Volkanovski still stands in the shadow of Holloway.

This is neither to suggest Volkanovski is a lesser fighter than the Hawaiian nor to suggest that Holloway deserved to win both of their fights. Rather, sometimes certain fighters capture the public imagination more than others and it becomes difficult to overcome that standing. Holloway, with his laid-back Hawaiian demeanor, fast-paced style and adorable son, captured the hearts of MMA fans with his TKO wins over Anthony Pettis and Jose Aldo. He has been a largely beloved figure since.

By contrast, Volkanovski has commanded respect more than adoration. He’s on the other side of the world from where most of the biggest MMA fights take place. He has more of a workmanlike style, and his 36% UFC finish rate is 25 points lower than Holloway’s. His daughters don’t have 40,000 Instagram followers like Holloway’s son. He has barely a quarter the number of Twitter followers and barely a fifth the Instagram followers of Holloway.

Featherweight is still widely perceived as Holloway’s division even with Volkanovski having held its championship for two and a half years. When then-Bellator MMA champion A.J. McKee talked of fighting in the UFC, he labeled Holloway as his dream fight rather than Volkanovski. Even after Volkanovski beat Holloway, the Hawaiian was able to generate more public buzz with his destruction of Calvin Kattar than Volkanovski did in his shellacking of Brian Ortega in a pay-per-view main event.

Sometimes, the better fighter is simply less popular and both can enjoy their different caches. Conor McGregor doesn’t threaten Charles Oliveira’s status in the lightweight division, even if McGregor’s pay-per-views continue to draw much more money than Oliveira’s. Oliveira is accepted as the best in his division, and McGregor’s popularity doesn’t touch that. The retired Khabib Nurmagomedov causes more problems for Oliveira’s niche in the sport. However, that dynamic isn’t at play with Volkanovski because they fought close fights and Holloway is the bigger star. That has allowed Holloway to operate as almost a shadow champion, preventing Volkanovski from getting his full due despite winning every UFC fight he has been in.

Paradoxically, the man with the most to gain in this third fight is not that man who lost the first two fights but the man who won the first two. That is not a normal when one fighter has two wins over another. There’s no question if Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker fought a third time that Whittaker would have everything to gain in finally besting his rival while Adesanya would just be trying to accomplish what he already did twice.

In the case of Volkanovski-Holloway 3, if Holloway wins, he still will have lost two of three and there will likely be calls for fourth fight at some point in the short- to medium-term future. He will certainly be better off as champion, but the best fighter will remain unsettled. By contrast, a definitive Volkanovski win will also mean the difference of being champion versus not being champion, but he can also firmly establish supremacy in a way Holloway cannot. He can finally be evaluated on the merits of his success without the lingering comparison to Holloway.

All of that applies if Volkanovski wins decisively. What if the third fight produces yet another close and contested decision? Well, maybe Holloway is just meant to linger as the thorn in Volkanovski’s side that he can never quite separate himself from.