Built Different: White Won't Say No to Volkanovski's Retirement Superfight — but Tsarukyan Is Done Waiting

The featherweight champion finished the unbeaten Evloev at UFC 333, then asked for Gaethje and a farewell. White left the door open. The number one contender has other ideas.

Alexander Volkanovski did the hardest thing available to him on Saturday night in Abu Dhabi. He took the undefeated record of Movsar Evloev — 20-0, the number one contender, the wrestler nobody wanted — and finished him, by TKO at 4:54 of the second round, for the second defense of his second featherweight title reign. It was his ninth win in a UFC featherweight title fight, a record, and his first stoppage in six bouts. Then, at 38 years old, he asked for the one fight that could end his career on purpose.

The pitch is the same one he made before UFC 333, and he doubled down on it afterward: give him lightweight champion Justin Gaethje, champion against champion, and win or lose, he is done. "That's something I would retire for," Volkanovski said at the post-fight press conference. "If they wanted to give me that opportunity, I would retire. Win or lose, retire."

He has thought through the obvious objection — that a featherweight champion chasing a second belt freezes two divisions. "I'm an honest guy and want it to be fair," he said. "I don't want to hold divisions up. But I believe that we could do this and not hold the division up." His plan is almost elegant: two veterans near the end, one superfight, and if he wins the lightweight title he vacates it on the spot. "If I win it and I vacate, then you got everyone else fighting anyway."

The history is what makes the ask more than a fantasy. Volkanovski has already gone up twice for the 155-pound belt and lost twice to Islam Makhachev — a unanimous decision at UFC 284 in February 2023, and a first-round knockout in a short-notice rematch eight months later. A third run at lightweight is not about unfinished business with Makhachev. It is about leaving with the one line his résumé does not have: two-division champion.

And the man who decides these things is not closing the door. Dana White called Volkanovski "built different" at the UFC 333 post-fight press conference, and he was plainer still when asked directly about the Gaethje request. "I think when you've accomplished what he has accomplished, there's not much we're going to say no to with him," White said. "So, we'll see how this whole thing plays out."

There are, however, two men standing between the idea and a poster. The first is Gaethje himself. The 37-year-old won the undisputed lightweight title in June at the White House, stopping Ilia Topuria, and he has not defended it, has not committed to another fight, and has talked about retirement often enough that the division is quietly planning around his silence. Volkanovski's superfight needs Gaethje to want one more war. Nothing Gaethje has said so far promises that.

The second is Arman Tsarukyan, the number one contender, who made his position unmistakable today. "Someone is trying to duck me; it's Justin Gaethje," Tsarukyan said. "Now he's talking about retirement. Either UFC is going to pay him so much money that he's going to fight, or he's just going to retire. They told me they're going to let me know at the end of November." And if Gaethje walks away and the UFC still wants a name opponent at lightweight, Tsarukyan is volunteering — at Volkanovski's expense. "Yeah, I would fight him," he said. "I think it's a good fight for me stylistically. He's old, bad chin. He's a tough opponent, but he's a little bit old now and with me, it's a perfect fight."

That is the real shape of the story. Volkanovski has earned the right to ask for almost anything, and the UFC president has all but said so in public. But lightweight has a queue, the queue has a leader, and the leader has been told to wait until the end of November for an answer. If Gaethje chooses the superfight, it is a farewell the sport will remember. If he chooses Tsarukyan, it is the division working exactly as it should. And if Gaethje retires, Volkanovski can still get his lightweight title shot — against Tsarukyan, for the vacant belt.

For now the most realistic next fight at 145 pounds remains a defense against Jean Silva, who was cageside in Abu Dhabi hoping for exactly that. Volkanovski, characteristically, sounds ready for any of it. He has a belt, a record ninth title-fight win, and the one thing no matchmaker can schedule: leverage.