Craig Jones: Alexander Volkanovski did more damage than Islam Makhachev at UFC 284, rematch favors him

Craig Jones thinks momentum is on Alexander Volkanovski’s side if he gets a rematch with Islam Makhachev.

Featherweight champion Volkanovski (25-2 MMA, 12-1 UFC) gave lightweight champ Makhachev (24-1 MMA, 13-1 UFC) everything he could handle in their title fight at UFC 284, but he lost a decision.

Volkanovski closed the fight out strong. He dropped Makhachev in Round 5 and rained down punches in top position. Jones was instrumental in helping Volkanovski fend off Makhachev’s grappling,, for the most part, and thinks Volkanovski would do an even better job if they ran things back.

“I would say the rematch favors Volks,” Jones told Submission Radio. “Volk, the first grappling exchange they had, he yelled out to us. He goes, ‘He’s not that strong.’ But even Volk talking to us in the first two rounds, he didn’t push the escapes as hard as he did in the later rounds. And he believes that obviously if they were to fight again, he would approach the first two rounds the same as he approached the last three. And I think that would be really interesting.”

Volkanovski disputed the decision, but Jones understands why the judges awarded the fight to Makhachev. However, he thinks Volkanovski did more damage.

“It’s so interesting with this fight. It’s like, on the scorecards you could give it to Islam,” Jones said. “But you kind of feel like as a pure fight, Alex kind of won, if you know what I mean. Like, I feel like if you scored the damage over the entirety of the fight, I feel like Alex did more damage. But because we’re held to scoring each round individually, (Islam won).”

Makhachev wasn’t as strong as Volkanovski expected. Jones turned heads when he said prior to the fight that Makhachev’s submissions weren’t that good, but Volkanovski was able to fend off all his ground attacks.

“We just sort of cracked that invincibility,” Jones said. “I mean, a lot of fighters go in and say, ‘Oh, Islam or Khabib (Nurmagomedov), they’re just another opponent, we don’t need to treat them differently.’ But then when they get in there, they fight in a way that’s sort of – ‘scared’ is the wrong word. They’re just too cautious of what the other guy’s good at. I think Volkanovski, he’s just mentally unbreakable in that sense.

“I mean, right up until 10 minutes all fight week, he’s so chill, so relaxed. It’s almost like he doesn’t even understand what he’s about to enter that weekend. So he just approaches Islam and treats him like he’s any other guy. And I think he saw that at no point was he overly cautious against Islam or anything like that. There was no fear of how good Islam’s grappling was. He just saw him as a regular guy and used the correct techniques in the right moments.”

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 284.