UFC heavyweight Sergei Pavlovich shares his first statement after suffering a unanimous decision loss to Alexander Volkov in the dunes of Arabia.
After finishing six fights in a row inside the very first round en route to an interim heavyweight title shot, knockout artist Sergei Pavlovich has now suffered back-to-back defeats in the octagon as he confesses that the strategy just wasn’t there at UFC Saudi Arabia.
Sergei Pavlovich shares first statement after loss to Volkov
Despite being a sizable favorite, Sergei Pavlovich just couldn’t get going against Alexander Volkov at this weekend’s UFC touchdown in Saudi Arabia; swinging wildly from outside of range as ‘Drago’ picked him apart with thunderous jabs.
In truth, it was a rather lackluster performance from the hard-hitting Russian juggernaut, who landed just 46 significant strikes across the whole 15 minutes.
Now, Palovich has now taken to social media to share his first statement since the disappointing unanimous decision loss to his fellow countryman.
“It wasn’t my day, nothing went according to plan,” he admitted, before confessing that he let the temptation of earning yet another viral knockout get in the way of the gameplan that he and his team had been working on.
“I was ready for anything, but I was too focused on getting a knockout and took too many unnecessary hits. The result was a loss by points… This was very emotional and tough for me, especially knowing that I didn’t meet your expectations.”
The heavyweight contender thanked his fans for their support before vowing to return a far more dangerous competitor than the one we saw in the dunes of Saudi Arabia.
“Thank you all for your support! I promise to come back stronger and wiser;” a terrifying prospect, should the Russian prove good on his word.
The result is Pavlovich’s third defeat as a professional mixed martial artist, having previously lost his UFC debut to Alistair Overeem and the interim title fight to Tom Aspinall, with his record now sitting at 18-3.
Volkov warns against Pavlovich continuing feud outside the UFC
In his statement, Pavlovich mentioned that the fight was “very emotional” for him, which was certainly proven by his shoving of Volkov after the final horn as ‘Drago’ attempted to shake his hand.
Speaking at the post-fight press conference, Volkov noted that he wasn’t sure why Pavlovich was so angry with him after going 15 hard minutes together in the octagon.
“I mean I didn’t think it was a nice thing to do from him,” he stated, before noting that the push is one thing, but what particularly annoyed him was being cursed at on live television.
“To be honest, this was the first time that I’ve ever heard Sergei curse because he kind of told me to – well I’m not going to repeat what he said – but this is the first time I’ve actually heard him maliciously use curse words in my direction.”
Given that Volkov and Pavlovich operate in many of the same circles, ‘Drago’ was asked what he would do if his fellow heavyweight tried to continue to fight outside of the UFC: “If he tries to attack me, I’ll call the cops.”
With the win at UFC Saudi Arabia, Volkov improved his professional record to 38-10 – the skyscraper Russian also made headlines by having a ‘stylist’ comb his hair in between rounds.