Volkanovski's Coach Calls Him This Era's GSP — Evloev Gets the Final Say
GOATIFYAlexander Volkanovski is two days away from defending his UFC featherweight championship against an unbeaten wrestler. Yet one of the most revealing comments of UFC 333 fight week is not a prediction about Movsar Evloev. It is a comparison from the champion's own coach: Eugene Bareman believes Volkanovski belongs in the same conversation as Georges St-Pierre, the former welterweight king who built a career on solving opponents rather than forcing every fight into one style.
That is a bold comparison, but Bareman's reasoning is more interesting than a greatest-of-all-time ranking. He says Volkanovski was not the most naturally gifted athlete he has coached. The champion became exceptional by accumulating skills, improving relentlessly and learning when to use each weapon. Saturday's main event in Abu Dhabi, against a 20-0 challenger whose wrestling has frustrated almost everyone he has faced, is a timely test of that idea.
Bareman's point is not natural talent — it is how Volkanovski built his game
It would have been easy for Bareman to describe his fighter as a born champion. Instead, he argued that Volkanovski's greatness is almost the opposite story. The City Kickboxing coach said the Australian would not rank near the top of his list for raw athletic gifts. In Bareman's telling, years of work transformed a fighter without obvious natural advantages into someone with an unusually complete technical toolkit.
The distinction matters because mixed martial arts is a sequence of problems, not a single examination of power or speed. A fighter who can punch hard but cannot handle a body lock has a ceiling. A gifted wrestler who needs uninterrupted top control can be forced into uncomfortable exchanges. Volkanovski's most valuable attribute is that opponents rarely get to dictate the entire conversation. He can manage distance with a jab, close it with combinations, attack the legs, defend takedowns and change the tempo without treating any one tactic as his identity.
That versatility is not glamorous in a highlight reel. It shows up in decisions made under pressure: when to abandon a combination, whether to circle away from the fence, how long to wrestle for a position and when to make an opponent reset. Bareman's praise is therefore less about one devastating technique than about the number of good answers his fighter has available. The coach believes the ability to choose correctly is itself a learned talent.
There is also a human element to the claim. Volkanovski, now 38, has been through the physical and mental cost of title runs, setbacks and rebuilding. Hard training alone cannot make every veteran faster, and no amount of preparation guarantees a win. But it can keep a veteran tactically sharper, more economical and less dependent on reflexes. That is the kind of advantage a champion needs when his next opponent is younger, unbeaten and built to impose one of MMA's most demanding styles.
The GSP comparison is about options, not identical careers
Georges St-Pierre is remembered for dominant wrestling, but reducing him to takedowns misses the reason he stayed ahead of his division. The Canadian developed a disciplined striking game, used the threat of one skill to create opportunities for another and changed his emphasis according to the opponent. Against dangerous strikers he could wrestle; against opponents prepared for wrestling he could win long stretches at range. Bareman sees the same problem-solving instinct in Volkanovski.
The comparison does not require pretending that the two men have the same frame, competition or championship résumé. St-Pierre ruled at welterweight, returned after a long absence to submit Michael Bisping for the middleweight title at UFC 217 in 2017, and retired with a 26-2 professional record. Volkanovski's story is a featherweight one, shaped by his trilogy with Max Holloway, his tactical battles with Diego Lopes and the challenges of moving up to face Islam Makhachev. Those are different paths through different eras.
What connects them is control over the kind of fight being contested. Volkanovski can appear to be giving away a physical advantage while using footwork, timing and layered threats to take away an opponent's preferred entry. He is short for the range at which he often works, yet he does not have to rush recklessly to land. He can draw a lead, counter it, angle off and return before the opponent has reset. That is a strategic skill, not merely a measurement of reach.
Greatness debates often get trapped in totals: title defenses, win streaks and the number of former champions defeated. Those numbers matter, but Bareman's argument asks a more useful question. How many different high-level problems can a fighter solve, and how quickly can he switch solutions when the first plan stops working? On that measure, the GSP analogy deserves consideration even from fans who would rank the Canadian above Volkanovski overall. Saturday offers a particularly demanding way to test the comparison rather than just repeat it.
Evloev's 20-0 wrestling record is the toughest test of that flexibility
Movsar Evloev is not an ordinary challenger who happens to be unbeaten. He arrives at UFC 333 with a 20-0 professional record, ten UFC victories and a style that repeatedly forces opponents into defensive wrestling decisions. In his UFC career he has landed 49 takedowns, including 22 across fights with Lerone Murphy, Aljamain Sterling, Arnold Allen and Diego Lopes. That is a substantial body of evidence that his grappling works against elite featherweights, not only against favorable matchups.
For Volkanovski, the first battle will be over the geography of the cage. Evloev can make an opponent defend repeated entries, retreat to the fence and spend valuable time standing up instead of throwing combinations. A takedown does not have to produce a submission to change a round; forcing an opponent to work back to his feet can reduce his offensive output and drain the energy needed for late-round exchanges. Evloev's pressure becomes more dangerous when a defender begins reacting before the shot has even arrived.
Volkanovski's counterargument is that his defensive wrestling and scrambling are integrated with his striking. He has been taken down comparatively rarely in UFC featherweight bouts, and his experience facing Makhachev at lightweight gave him an unusually difficult test of grappling decisions. Those experiences do not make him immune to Evloev's pressure. They do mean he understands the difference between briefly conceding a position and allowing a rival to build sustained control. Getting back to the feet quickly is only half the job; he must also make Evloev pay for the effort of getting there.
The champion's best stretches may come when he can vary the picture: small changes of stance, feints that draw premature shots, combinations finished with an angle rather than a straight retreat, and occasional wrestling of his own to stop the challenger feeling safe. Evloev, meanwhile, can prove that his wrestling is more than a predictable plan by mixing in strikes and finding entries without chasing desperate attempts. If the fight becomes five rounds of the same sequence, the challenger may be dictating it. If it keeps changing shape, Bareman's versatility argument gains force.
At 38, one more defense could turn a compliment into a record
The timing of Bareman's comparison gives it extra weight. Volkanovski lost his featherweight crown to Ilia Topuria in 2024, then reclaimed the vacant belt by beating Diego Lopes in April 2025 after Topuria moved divisions. He followed that by defeating Lopes again at UFC 325 in Sydney in early 2026. The second victory was a five-round unanimous decision, scored 49-46, 49-46 and 50-45. It was not a nostalgic cameo; it was another full-length demonstration of his ability to make adjustments and sustain them.
That result tied Jose Aldo's mark of eight UFC featherweight championship-fight victories. A successful defense against Evloev would move Volkanovski ahead on that measure. Records cannot settle every argument about the best featherweight ever, especially across eras, but this one would be concrete. He would have defended against a new generation's undefeated contender after already navigating Holloway, Aldo, Lopes and a return from a damaging defeat.
Age makes the proposition more difficult rather than automatically more heroic. At 38, Volkanovski cannot assume that his reaction time, recovery and durability will remain unchanged. A fast, persistent grappler can expose small declines more effectively than a striker who gives him long pauses to read patterns. Nor should a win over Evloev be treated as guaranteed simply because the champion has defeated elite wrestlers before. MMA careers are full of examples in which a technically superior veteran finally met the opponent who made the margins too thin.
Yet that uncertainty is precisely why Saturday matters. A champion who succeeds only when his original strengths are at their peak is easier to explain than one who keeps evolving after the sport has already forced him to rebuild. If Volkanovski can break Evloev's rhythm, protect his own offense and manage the championship rounds, the GSP comparison will look less like a coach's tribute and more like an observation about how elite fighters age. If Evloev wins, the challenger will have answered a different historical question by beating one of the division's most adaptable champions.
Bareman did not argue that Volkanovski and St-Pierre are the same fighter. He argued that the best fighters build enough skills to decide where a fight should happen, then have the discipline to change direction when necessary. That is a more interesting standard than a simple tally of knockout highlights.
Evloev's undefeated record and persistent takedown game make UFC 333 a severe test of that theory. Volkanovski has the experience, tactical variety and championship history to respond, but he still has to demonstrate it against a challenger who has never lost. By Saturday night, the comparison will have fresh evidence behind it — and the featherweight title will have an answer that matters more than any ranking debate.
