Robert Whittaker: Loss to Islam Makhachev affected Alexander Volkanovski against Ilia Topuria

For the first time in his 12-year career, Alexander Volkanovski suffered back-to-back losses.  Not only has he lost consecutive fights, “The Great” was knocked out in both losses.  

Volkanovski stepped in on 10-days notice to face lightweight champion Islam Makhachev in a rematch at UFC 294 last October after former champion Charles Oliveira was forced out of the title bout due to a cut.  Four months later, at UFC 298, Volkanovski was knocked out by Topuria.  Many questioned whether Volkanovski returned too soon.

Former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker believes the loss to Makhachev definitely affected Volkanovski in the fight with Topuria.  

“I don’t want to come off as I’m downplaying Ilia.  I think he is phenomenal,” Whittaker said on the MMArcade podcast.  “I know personally, without a shadow of a doubt, that fight and loss to Makhachev does affect you.  It did affect him moving forward because coming off a loss affects your next fight whether you like it or not.”

“Going into this fight with [Paulo] Costa the last loss affected me,” Whittaker continued.  “I think I could have performed better against Costa if I didn’t. have the nerves of losing the fight before and wanting to change everything up.  You can’t expect Volk to get in there and not be thinking, ‘Okay, I don’t want to get knocked out.  Okay, I can’t let this happen.  I can’t let a loss happen.  I need to change what happened last fight.’  You can try to convince yourself but it’s there.  I say this only from my personal experience… That Makhachev fight impacted the Topuria fight without a shadow of a doubt, in my opinion.”