Why featherweight king Alex Volkanovski did not feel like a UFC champion until he almost lost his title

Alexander Volkanovski is the greatest fighter in Australian MMA history and the undisputed UFC featherweight champion, but he didn't feel like a world champion until the moment he very nearly lost his title.

The fighting pride of the Illawarra — who takes on Korean veteran Chan Sung Jung around 2pm AEST on Sunday at UFC 273 in Jacksonville — had always felt like a champion inside the Octagon. That came easy.

«Doing my thing inside the cage, I've always had that down pat. Filling the shoes of a champion outside the cage, that's something I had to learn,» Volkanovski said.

«I have my own tall-poppy syndrome. I'd always pull myself down. If I saw one negative comment, I would think everyone thought that. It changed after the [Brian] Ortega fight.»

The Ortega win was not Volkanovski's greatest triumph — that has to be his first victory over Max Holloway. It wasn't even his narrowest victory — the second fight with Holloway takes that prize.

But it was the closest he's come to losing. Volkanovski won just about every minute of the fight, except for 40-odd seconds where the opportunistic Ortega nearly subdued him: Once with a guillotine, and once with a triangle. They were tight, and they were deep, but both times Volkanovski managed to escape.

«People know about my resilience, my heart, but it was good for the world to see it. I got put in a dangerous position, which might be a negative, but it was a positive because of what it showed about me,» Volkanovski said.

«That's why I'm so happy with how that fight went. Even when he landed a couple of shots right at the end, it added to the story, it added to the hype. It helped make it a fight people are going to remember.

»Could I have avoided those positions? Probably. But I wanted to