Alexander Volkanovski favors Ilia Topuria to beat Justin Gaethje in a rematch: 'He tried to rush everything'

Alexander Volkanovski was as surprised as anybody to see Justin Gaethje pull off the big upset win over Ilia Topuria at UFC Freedom 250. Volkanovski was in attendance at the White House and witnessed history when his old rival suffered his first career defeat.Volkanovski, the reigning two-time UFC featherweight champion, had his first title run ended at the hands of a Topuria knockout in February 2024.

It was Topuria's crowning moment, propelling the Georgian-Spanish talent to superstardom before he eventually moved up to lightweight and captured a second belt at 155 pounds in June 2025, cementing Topuria as one of the UFC’s most seemingly unbeatable forces.Speaking Wednesday on "The Ariel Helwani Show," Volkanovski shared what he believes went wrong for his former rival in Sunday’s fourth-round stoppage loss to Gaethje."It was a bit of everything," Volkanovski told Uncrowned.

"You have to credit Gaethje for an unreal game plan. He stayed very disciplined. He knew when to fire, he knew when to block, he knew when to put himself in safe positions.

He did a great job. So great execution of the game plan was definitely a massive part of it."I thought Ilia was very aggressive.

I think he tried to rush everything very early, and that's why he took damage pretty early. Even though he had success in the earlier rounds, that damage was already accumulating. He started getting a little busted up straight away.

The jab was landing on Gaethje. Gaethje did a great job of jabbing on the back foot, staying safe enough when Ilia was trying to hit him, or even when he did hit him — even those times where Ilia would bridge a nice, beautiful one-two, [Gaethje] would just roll with it and rattle him a bit, but not enough to put him lights out. Then, just straight after that, put himself in a safe enough position where Ilia just couldn't land that clean shot to put him to sleep.

“[Gaethje] slowly, slowly wore on him,” Volkanovski continued, “and then just started having more and more s