- John McCarthy insisted that Alexander Volkanovski is good but Islam Makhachev was just on a different level
- “Big John” thinks Islam’s team already knew that the left kick will get the job done on Volk
After watching UFC 294, John McCarthy is certain Alexander Volkanovski’s KO loss to Islam Makhachev wasn’t a result of taking the fight in short-notice.
Short notice wasn’t the reason Volk lost
Speaking on his Weighing In podcast, “Big John” pointed out that while it is true that Volk didn’t have a decent training camp for UFC 294, it wasn’t the reason he got KO’d. Instead, McCarthy concluded that Makhachev was just an extraordinary fighter.
“That [short notice] had nothing to do with how this fight played out, to be honest,” McCarthy said. “And again… we talked about the f**king balls of Volkanovski, taking this fight the way he is and look, still, absolutely, and he is one of the best goddamn f**king pound-for-pound fighters out there. The dude is a monster. He’s just fighting somebody that, at a weight class above, is also one of the best damn fighters in the world right now, and pound-for-pound right at the top of the list, I mean… it’s not like he’s taking on a you know a champion that is average.”
“There are some champions, you can look and say that champion is maybe a champion but they’ve had an average career but they had a great fight and they won it and it can be that way but I just look and it’s like I take nothing from Volkanovski you know… he went out there and he fought and he fought hard but you could see the things clearly right away,” he continued.
Islam’s team knew the left kick was the key
Further backing his assessment, McCarthy said that Makhachev’s coaches may have realized that the left kick worked on Volkanovski in the first fight and that’s the reason why they decided to utilize it early on in the rematch.
“That left kick was a great weapon for him early in the first fight and it was something that his coaches, I know are going to you know, if I can pick it out and you can pick it out, his coaches are going to pick it out and say, ‘Hey, this worked for us. This is what we’re going to go to. This gave him problem, this is what we want to start to do, we’re going to start setting him up with this’,” McCarthy speculated.
“And you can see where you know that progression was in the first fight and it was he right away started off with it,” he added.
As it stands, Makhachev is welcoming the idea of moving up to welterweight and compete for the 170-pound title. On the other hand, he is also fine with a showdown with Justin Gaethje or a rematch with Charles Oliveira.
Check out McCarthy’s full podcast below:
