“ My biggest regret is that I did not appreciate anything '': how Alexander Volkanovski came across the most annoying truth of MMA

The famous combat coach Greg Jackson used to say that he had a prior prior routine with Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone, one of his star students.

The way it would work, they would enter the changing rooms the night of combat, and Cerrone would immediately realize how stupid it was to go out and fight another man in a cage for the entertainment of others. How horrible. How crazy. He didn't know why he had never thought it was a good idea, but he was done now. He would only do the latter because he had already accepted it and there were a lot of people in this arena while waiting to see him, but after that? Never more.

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ALL RIGHTJackson told him when they were shooting the gloves and began to warm up. The last. Retirement begins tomorrow. Let's go out and let him count. This is what it took was this shared fiction. Because even Cerrone wanted to fight, he also hated that.

And why not? It's incredibly stressful. Almost everything can happen to you in this cage, from physical disaster to personal humiliation. He continued to register to do it because part of him just couldn't bear not Do it, but he also had a hard time being loved all this.

This is not an unknown problem for many fighters. Even the big ones, like the former featherweight of the UFC, Alexander Volkanovski, had to learn to enjoy the process as much as the result.

“It's difficult, and I have the impression that it has just happened now,” Volkanovski told Unprown before his fight for the 145 pound championship against Diego Lopes during the UFC 314 event on Saturday in Miami. “I have always been this guy to build myself, win, then become emotional in the relief of being done, but not well appreciated it as a human being. I said to myself that (while preparing) for this one, which I really can't wait to raise my hand and be Alex Volkanovski soaks this moment, not only Alex the fighter, which I think I think they want to hear. “

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This sometimes surprises people to learn that even hard professional is not necessarily everything that is excited to go and fight live on live television. Even someone like Nick Diaz, who seemed to be a lot as a fighter born without an ounce of fear, described once like a “dark and dark person” during the period preceding a planned fight.

“I just despise these people who are happy to go there,” said Diaz to ESPN in 2021. “… It's wrong. If it's not wrong, you have to be crazy.”

Chael Sonnen grew up on wrestling carpets, then spent almost all his adult life in MMA. He recorded nearly 50 professional fights, but never reached a point where he could take advantage of it when he was still there.

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“It makes me envy that people got there,” said Sonnen. “My biggest regret is that I did not appreciate it all. It was still so stressful.”

At the same time, many of the same fighters who had trouble taking advantage of the experience also fought with his absence.

“You will die of wanting to fight, your fingers crossed,” said Sonnen. “The second where you receive a call and you find out who will be the opponent, so everything is different. Each breathing you take is just different. Each bite of food. Everything is different when you have this real person. And then you start it again, and then you have the opportunity and you sit down the last thing you want to be the thing.

This is partly what Volkanovski was trying to follow his loss with direct elimination against Islam Makhachev at UFC 294 in 2023. He tended to jump immediately in the training camp and hunt his next fight too early, he said, because his mind tended to go to “dark places” otherwise. It was a moment of rare vulnerability which, to some, made Volkanovski more relatively human. Others – in particular some fighter colleagues – criticized him as mentally weak.

“It was something where, if I was not a commissioned, it would probably not have been my choice to share this with everyone,” said Volkanovski. “But it was emotional. It was a vulnerable period of my career. Even if I was champion, it was as if I did not understand. ”

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Part of the problem for Volkanovski was that he had held so frantically occupied as a champion that he never gave himself a chance to stop and think, even less to enjoy the fruits of his work. As soon as a fight was over, he already turned to the following. Over time, he said, he felt that he was losing any feeling of identity outside of his fighter life.

“It is a difficult place to find, this balance,” said Volkanovski. “If you want to be the best in the world, it's a sacrifice you will have to make. I don't know if you can balance this. Maybe some people can, and of course them. But I told myself that I don't have time for nothing else. he.”

At 36, Volkanovski now has another chance of recovering the title of 145 pounds which he lost against Ilia Topuria in 2024. With topuria going to a light weightVolkanovski faces lopes of the hard competitor with the vacant featherweight title on the line in the headliner of the UFC 314.

He gave him a new perspective, he said, to have a new life inspired in his hopes of title at a time when he finally has the impression of knowing what to do with this hectic life.

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“It's difficult, and a large part comes down to the identity of this fighter,” said Volkanovski. “You have the impression that you have no real goal if you don't do that. Feeling your time running, you want to get the most out of it and enjoy more. ”

A fighter who seems to have cracked this code a little is the longtime teammate of Volkanovski City Kickboxing, Dan Hooker. During his memorable battle with Mateusz Gamrot at the UFC 305 last summer, the UFC's corner cam caught Hooker by saying to his coaches between the rounds he “loves this S ***”, while blood flowed on his face.

But this joy in the fire of the battle was not always as accessible to him, said Hooker. It took years of experience – and a certain forced time due to injuries – in order to win this perspective.

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“When you are young and bull, you take everything for granted,” said Hooker. “When you are injured or you cannot compete, you no longer take it for granted. You realize that there is nowhere else that you can have this chance to test your mind and body to extremes as you do here. … You work so hard to enter these situations, to feel this level of emotion.

“I used to try to cross the fight without enjoying it, but I would realize that I am always depressed just after the fight, while waiting for the next one,” continued Hooker. “You start to realize that it's the right part and you miss it while simply trying to end it.”

Talk to retired fighters and you realize that there is something. Once everything is over, they lack the feeling of walking through this curtain in a crowded arena. The nerves and the stress they felt at the time smoothed in their memories. This individual combat rush, with so many things on the line, is a feeling that they cannot get anywhere else. Some only seem to realize it after it was removed from them.

It is perhaps because he is now closer to the end of his career than the start, but Volkanovski no longer wants to miss these moments. He does not know how much more he will get, and it took years of suffering and sacrifice just to arrive here. He wants to make sure he appreciates him while he can, he said.

“This time, I can't wait to go there, to do my thing, then to appreciate it properly as a human being,” said Volkanovski. “I was able to have this break and evolve as a person. Now, I’m really looking forward to doing this, getting on this belt around my waist, and really enjoying it as a person. ”