As Alexander Volkanovski gears up for UFC 314 for a chance to become the featherweight champion for a second time, he’s made a concerning revelation about one of his old fights. As we all know, ‘The Great’ has been pretty vocal about his mental health struggles in the past. And one of those incidents where his emotions really took a hit was when he fought Max Holloway for a second time. Although the Aussie juggernaut won the fight, the fans weren’t very pleased with the outcome of that matchup.

The second bout of the duo’s legendary 145lbs title trilogy came at UFC 251 where Volk managed to beat Max Holloway via a split-decision victory. However, the fans, who heavily favored ‘Blessed’ in that fight, argued that the now-BMF champion had done enough to secure the win and the title that night, disagreeing with the judges’ 47-48, 48-47, and 47-48 scores. But the community didn’t just aim at the judges, but at Volkanovski as well. And it is safe to say that their words didn’t sit well with the Australian star.

“That was a bad time in my life, to be honest. I’m a pretty chill, nice guy. I don’t try to offend anybody, and Max is very well-loved. So, the backlash I got from that fight was [tough],” Alexander Volkanovski stated in an interview with ‘TNT Sports’. “You hear it all the time, ‘It was a robbery,’ every time there’s a close fight. Everyone’s going to carry on that way. But people can be pretty nasty with it. I wasn’t used to that at that stage.”

Claiming to be a person who never seeks to aim at anybody to hurt them, Volkanovski found it hard to navigate through the negativity during that time in his life. In this age of social media, almost no one is safe from the wrath of the fans, but ‘The Great’ eventually learned to get the hang of things by starting to focus more on the positives than the negatives.

“It was hard. I was really struggling with it because, again, I’m a nice guy and never ever try to offend anybody. That’s just how I am. And for people to hate me just purely because of that, I didn’t know really how to take it,” the former featherweight champion further stated. “So it was a hard sort of time for me, especially on social media. I’m better with it now, where, you know, I don’t look at the negative comments, but I didn’t know what I knew now.”

For the unversed, Volk beat Holloway thrice at UFC 245, the aforementioned 251, and then demolished ‘Blessed’ at UFC 276 respectively. Despite putting their rivalry to bed, Volkanovski still didn’t feel like he had done enough due to the narrow win at UFC 251. Therefore, ‘Volk’ had agreed to go for the trilogy bout as he felt like he had a chip on his shoulder because of the backlash from fans. “It was definitely a tough time. So it was something that I was like, ‘I need to fight him again and just silence everybody,” the former champ added.

Well, things worked out in the long run for Alexander Volkanovski. But did you know the result of the UFC 251 fight really triggered the fans of Max Holloway? His fans went so far as to threaten media personnel, prompting him to step in and urge them to stop.

Max Holloway called out fans for taking things too far after his second loss to Alexander Volkanovski

A day after his loss to Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 251, Max Holloway returned to the United States when he found out that his fans had taken some seriously drastic measures, as they thought he was ‘robbed’. But for those media personnel who did not share the same sentiment, things were getting dangerous. Holloway found out that his fans had threatened the media, and straight away called them out to stop because although he appreciated their support, he wasn’t very happy with their methods and even urged them to accept the outcome of the fight.

“Just landed in Vegas for another quarantine and was told some guys in the media are receiving threats for saying my fight was not a robbery. This is not ok. I appreciate everyone who wants to ride for me, but that ain’t it,” Max Holloway wrote on X. “It is what it was. Nothing changed for me as a fighter. We proved our point. I still have my five belts at home.” A class move from the ‘Blessed Express’ nonetheless.

Well, UFC 251 is in the rearview, and it’s UFC 314 that we need to focus on now. Let us know what you think about the outcome of the main event between Alexander Volkanosvi and Diego Lopes in the comments down below.