Volkanovski is Australia's best male athlete 'by a mile'... so why is he ignored when he should be celebrated?

What more does Alex Volkanovski have to do?

He is Australia’s best international male athlete by a Wollongong mile. He sits atop the UFC’s men’s pound for pound rankings. Every respectable MMA pundit has him top two on their personal pound for pound lists, and seldom is he No.2. He is undefeated since 2013 with that loss coming against a fella who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

He has ripped through every single relevant UFC flyweight. He’s beaten Max Holloway three times, fought a war so violent that it would make Putin blush against Brian Ortega, and took the crown away from the greatest flyweight ever (prior to Volk) when he beat Jose Aldo in the most obvious passing of the torch fight since Oscar De La Hoya beat Julio César Chávez Sr.

He is never in a boring fight and has to carry his cojones around in a wheelbarrow when he steps out of the octagon after raising his arm yet again. He is a genuine MMA legend, and he’s not done.

Beyond just the fighting, which is peerless, he’s an engaging guy with an incredible backstory, is a good enough trash-talker, and he has a YouTube channel where he makes cooking videos that are better than you would expect for a man who makes a living rearranging people’s faces.

And yet, his Q rating is lower than Roxy Jacenko.

Honestly, what does the guy have to do?

He should get the Manny Pacquiao in Manila treatment where his face is plastered on every billboard and every street corner.

Especially in the AFL and NRL off-season and with the summer of cricket winding down, this country should only be talking about Alex Volkanovski coming home to put his decade long undefeated streak on the line on February 11 in order to try and become the fifth synchronous double champ in UFC history (Conor McGregor, Daniel Cormier*, Amanda Nunes and Henry Cejudo). But we aren’t.

Kambosos versus Haney got more mainstream publicity than this fight, and Kambosos hasn’t accomplished a tenth of what Volk has in his sport.

I don’t even blame the UFC this time, though that is my usual go-to (as an aside, on the day of writing this the UFC has just inked a deal to make Logan Paul’s Prime the official sports drink of the UFC, whatever that means. Oh well, at least the fighters are getting a nice chunk of change out of this. Oh wait, no they aren’t.)

The UFC has brought him out to Australia. He’s fighting for double champ status in Perth, a classic move of bringing an international fighter home for a career moment – think Georges St-Pierre in his rematch with Matt Serra. They’ve promoted him well enough. This isn’t their fault. It’s ours.

Alexander Volkanovski of Australia celebrates his win in the UFC featherweight championship fight. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)

Maybe we just have too many sports, too many athletes during the winter months. In summer, other than Test cricket which appears to be dying a slow and painful death, maybe we just don’t want to worry about professional sport?

And when he fights in footy season, well, it’s footy season. Or maybe we still thumb our nose at MMA as a sport, even if subconsciously? Maybe MMA is still too niche of a sport here to truly lionise Volk? Or maybe we just don’t care about Volk.

He is just another Mr Inbetween. Not in the sense that he is stuck in a non-major sport, but in the sense of the actual show Mr Inbetween. That show, created by fellow bald-headed savant Scott Ryan, is an Australian version of The Sopranos. I don’t just throw that comparison around.

Anyway, Ryan plays Ray Shoestring, a type of handyman in the Sydney underground who had to juggle his conscience and family, with the various crimes that he commits. It is a brilliant and wickedly funny show that genuinely should be standing next to The Castle and Chopper as the best pieces of Australian visual art ever produced.

It’s uniquely Australian but it has also received genuine international acclaim. The Hollywood Reporter called it “one of 2018’s best shows”, the New York Times included it in their “best of 2018 list” and Rolling Stone’s top TV critic Alan Sepinwall (who wrote the book on The Sopranos) also loved it.

Yet so many in this country have ignored it, just like we are ignoring our other bald-headed fighting man.

All I want to do is have a conversation about whether Volk is strong enough to deal with Makachev and what happened at the end of Mr Inbetween, but I can’t find anyone to talk about it with.

What are we doing here?

Embrace our own. Buy the fight. Watch the show.

Yeah, Volk is a big underdog but like my friend Dave said to me when texting about that fight, “it’s his toughest [fight] but I’m so far past doubting the man now”. You and me both.

Get around him.

Go Volk.