He's tussled with "monster" rugby league front rowers and even won a premiership, but Australia's Alex Volkanovski says having a UFC featherweight title shot this weekend is much bigger than any grand final.
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Volkanovski, who challenges Max Holloway in Las Vegas on Sunday (AEDT), played league for several years.
The 31-year-old from the NSW South Coast was man of the match in Warilla's 2011 Group Seven grand final winning team, before switching to mixed martial arts the following year.
Seven straight UFC wins since November 2016 have propelled him into a clash with Hawaiian Holloway in one of three world title fights on a massive show.
"It's taken three years for me to get this title (shot), every fight feels like a grand final but a title fight just feels so much bigger," Volkanovski told AAP.
"This is just huge, massive, this is what I've been waiting for."
Describing himself as a "five foot six front-rower with a very very big head", Volkanovski got up to 97kgs in his rugby league days, but has shed over 30 to compete as a featherweight.
Holloway is 12 centimetres taller, but Volkanovski's time in league means he's no stranger to coming up against far bigger specimens.
"I'm used to these big guys, playing football against monster front-rowers guys that were way bigger than me back then but I handled myself more than okay," Volkanovski said.
"Now I get to fight these little featherweights."
Volkanovsi showed promise as a league player.
"I was in a lot of rep sides when I was younger but I didn't take it seriously enough, I lost some opportunities, my fault," he said.
"A lot people that knew me knew I was a very handy player a lot of people thought I was mad when I gave it up, but look where I am now."
He said he had adjusted well to the time difference since arriving in Las Vegas last Saturday.
Volkanovski has already met Holloway since arriving and expected there would be mutual respect rather than trash talk between them in the lead-up to the fight.
"We've not really had proper conversations, we said 'Hello' this morning," Volkanovski said.
"Nothing but respect to the guy, but I've got a job to do and unfortunately I'm going to have to punch his face on Saturday night."
Australian Associated Press
