Alexander Volkanovski is now preparing for his fight against Ilia Topuria, and the champ has an interesting training partner for the job: UFC lightweight’s Brad Riddell. As an MMA fighter and a former kickboxer, Volkanovski thinks the Riddell “can sort of simulate” Topuria and even deliver a better fight than his approaching challenger.
Volkanovski and Topuria will meet on February 17 at UFC 298. The fight follows the champ’s fight versus Islam Makhachev, who defeated him via KO last October. With the result of his previous fight, some started expressing fears that Volkanovski had finally reached the end of his era. However, the champ is determined to end the doubts when he faces the young opponent, who remains undefeated but he promises to “humble.”
In line with this, “The Great” enlisted the help of Riddell, who is currently fighting in the lightweight division of UFC. The fighter is now on a break after experiencing a three-fight losing skid from Rafael Fiziev, Jalin Turner, and Renato Moicano. Volkanovski, nonetheless, has faith in the fighter, saying he can meet his training needs stylistically and copy the style of Topuria.
“I’ve got Brad Riddell over, who’s obviously a great training partner just in general but even stylistically,” Volkanovski shared on his YouTube page. “He’s obviously a very good boxer himself, I think he can sort of simulate Ilia.”
Prior to this, Topuria made a comment on the 35-year-old, saying Volkanovski is “a good striker” but “not a natural wrestler.” Despite this, the champ believes that the former kickboxer and current training partner could still give him something that might help him in his preparation. For Volkanovski, Riddell can even surpass Topuria by giving him more challenging training fights than the actual opponent in the cage.
“To be quite honest, I think he can give me a lot more problems than what Ilia will and that’s not knocking Ilia, that’s just showing how good Brad is,” said Volkanovski. “Obviously, Brad’s had hundreds of kickboxing matches and had a heap of boxing matches so, and he’s a strong, stocky, powerful dude as well so it’s good to have him in.”
