Slaughter to Prevail frontman Alex Terrible — real name Aleksandr Shikolai — is putting down his microphone and preparing to throw hands after signing to fight with BKFC.
The Russian-born deathcore singer is expected to debut with the bare-knuckle fighting promotion before the end of the year, with plans to turn his attention to training after his band wraps up its current tour in September. He announced the news via Full Send MMA, with BKFC officials confirming the news to MMA Fighting.
“I’m just a musician, I’m not a fighter, I’m not a sportsman, or some shit,” Terrible said. “I’m just a regular dude who grew up in the streets. You call it in the hood. In Russia, if you grow up in a village, it is the hood. Then I found a boxing gym, I found myself in this f*cking boxing, a new passion.”
While nothing is set in stone just yet, Terrible is currently expected to make his BKFC debut in December.
The 30-year-old singer, who first rose to prominence making cover songs on YouTube, mentioned a social influencer turned fighter as a potential first opponent, but no deal has been struck just yet to make it official.
“We don’t know the opponent yet. I heard about one name, Bryce Hall,” Terrible said. “I really don’t care who it’s going to be.
“I just want to fight and I have nothing to lose because I’m a musician. If they put me against a fighter and if I knock him out, good. If he knocks me out, I don’t f*cking care. I just want to put on a good fight and show what I have in my heart. That’s it.”
His band Slaughter to Prevail is one of the fastest rising heavy metal outfits in the industry right now, with more than 1.1 million average listeners per month on Spotify.
Alexander Volkanovski | Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
Alexander Volkanovski only has eyes on getting the UFC featherweight title back.
The longtime champion at 145 pounds has been content to sit on the sidelines for much of 2024 following a knockout loss to Ilia Topuria at UFC 298 this past February. That defeat ended Volkanovski’s four-year reign atop the division and raised questions as to what would be next for him, given that he has now lost three of his past four fights (including two failed attempts to wrest the lightweight title from Islam Makhachev).
Volkanovski told Sky Sports New Zealand that he’s confident waiting for a chance to fight the winner of Topuria’s Oct. 26 title defense against Max Holloway at UFC 308 is the right move.
“That’s exactly what’s happening,” Volkanovski said. “So I can wait or if I don’t want to wait, I can do something else. Or just wait, and the UFC has made that clear. Obviously, that’s probably what I’m going to do.
“I could have maybe done a lightweight fight, I think there’s a lot of exciting fights there, but the UFC aren’t big fans of floating. Look, you want to go to lightweight, you’re going to have to probably stay there, that’s the only thing, and then I might lose that featherweight title shot. So I might just have to wait. It’s only a couple of months, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Though Volkanovski was defeated twice by Makhachev, their first encounter at UFC 284 was a thrilling five-round encounter that Makhachev edged out on the scorecards. Even if Volkanovski could likely book any number of marquee matchups at 155 pounds, he’s not leaving the featherweight division without one more title fight.
So does he expect to rematch Ilia, or face Holloway a fourh time after earning three previous victories over “Blessed?”
“Who would I rather fight?” Volkanovski said. “Obviously, Ilia’s got that one over me. I want that back. But at the end of the day, I want that belt back as well.
“And who do I think is going to win? Probably Max. But again, it’s a tough fight. Ilia’s got some hands on him, he’s not easily shook, he’s going to come forward, he’s going to be looking for the finish the whole way through that fight, but I think Max is just going to be a little bit too much for Ilia. But if Ilia walks through him, he’s proven himself, but then I’m just going to take it back off him anyway.”
Had Topuria vs. Holloway been booked before the final quarter of 2024, there’s a chance Volkanovski could have fought for the title before the end of the year, but as it stands he’s fine with how events played out. One thing he had made up his mind about is that he wouldn’t settle for fighting just for the sake of fighting.
“I was obviously aware of that [matchup] earlier on,” Volkanovski said. “I told them I wanted the break as I’ve been having, so I wanted to fight probably later in the year and they said they might be doing that. I thought it would have been a little bit earlier, but it ended up being at a date where I was like, ‘Well, I could have maybe come back here.’ But whatever, so everything is probably going to get pushed back a couple of months further than I would have liked, but at the same time I can’t be active and just fight anybody, or I can just wait for the title.”
“What gets me out of bed, just a contender fight at featherweight?” Volkanovski added. “It’s probably going to be hard. Look, I love to be active, but at the same time I need the right fights. It’s easy to be active and get the right fights while you’re champion because you’re defending against the No. 1 contenders. Very, very easy to stay active and have important fights. But me just taking a fight just to stay busy, it just doesn’t make sense.”
Harrison returns to action for her highly anticipated second UFC fight against No. 2 ranked Bantamweight Ketlen Vieira next month at UFC 307, which goes down inside Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is headlined by Light Heavyweight champion Alex Pereira vs. Khalil Roundtree.
It was pretty confusing that Harrison wasn’t given a title shot after dismantling Holly Holm at UFC 300 (watch highlights). Instead, she had to wait for the winner of Raquel Penningtonvs. Julianna Pena, which will co-headline UFC 307.
While her sole focus is Brazil’s Vieira, Harrison will be ready to step in on less than a minute’s notice if one of the Bantamweight co-main eventers falls out.
“If one of those b—ches gets sick or hurt or injured, I will take that fight on 30 seconds notice. I’m ready. Best in the world, I’m ready. So let’s go… where’s Tanya Harding when you need her?” Harrison laughed while telling Grind City Media’s John Morgan recently.
With a win, Harrison is no doubt next in line for the title, and she doesn’t have a preference, although she would like to maim Pena (possibly because of these comments).
“I mean, honestly, to have a preference would mean that I have an emotion,” Harrison said. “I don’t care. I really do not care. Like, the goal is the belt. But if we’re talking about Kayla, the psychopath, like, of course, I would rather put an elbow through Juliana’s skull than Raquel’s. Like, Juliana’s face is annoying. Of course, I would pick that face like, of course.”
UFC 307 goes down on Oct. 5, 2024.
To checkout UFC’s upcoming schedule of events click here.
The relationship between the UFC boss and arguably the greatest athlete to ever compete in professional fighting is complicated, to say the least. But recent months have seen White put an incredible amount of time and energy into convincing everyone that Jones is indisputably No. 1 when it comes to discussing who is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
Jones has never truly lost, but his 2023 fight with Ciryl Gane was his first since February 2020 and he hasn’t fought since, which raises two questions: Is it fair to deny him the No. 1 spot on the pound-for-pound list due to inactivity, and, if so, why is White so steadfast in his defense of Jones’ position? The MMA Fighting crew has been as befuddled as everyone else when it comes to understanding White’s motivations, so Alexander K. Lee, Damon Martin, and Shaun Al-Shatti decided to sit down and toss out a few theories as to why Jones has become White’s sacred cow.
Al-Shatti: It’s really something, isn’t it? All of this. Never did I think the saga to reach UFC 309 would reach such farcical proportions that MMA as a whole — a community notorious for not being able to agree on anything — would unite under a unified front to bully Jon Jones into fighting Tom Aspinall (and potentially ruin the one thing he values most about his undefeated legacy), and by proxy, force Dana White to quadruple down on defending the man he once penned a whole damn press release about just to tear him to shreds. Seriously, we’ve come a long way from 763 words of outright questioning Jones’ manhood to suddenly propping “Bones” up as the second coming of the Messiah every other week.
As this topic continues to spiral even further into the absurd, I have to think two primary factors are driving it. The first is that White is in far too deep to relent now. What may have started as an offhand tangent at a particularly bizarre time has now ballooned into something much bigger than it has any real right to be. There’s zero chance a character as stubborn as White will back out now — and that applies tenfold if means gifting a win to his least favorite people on the planet (the media).
But the second factor, and likely the genesis of all of this, is that White thinks he’s actually doing the one thing he’s always begged to do: Be a promoter. It was clear to anyone with eyeballs that Jones vs. Miocic wasn’t the fight fans wanted to see when it was first booked in 2023, and it’s become even clearer to anyone with eyeballs that Jones vs. Miocic has only engorged in unpopularity as 2024 has dragged on. Jones’ demands were more of an annoyance than anything last year; now they’re genuinely ruining an otherwise compelling division. But White’s job until Nov. 19 is still to convince folks why they should care about UFC 309, and for most of his life as a public figure, fans have followed White’s words as law.
In that way, this continual Jones coddling comes off as a prolonged justification for a fight White knows no one wants to see but his company nonetheless intends to make. It’s just that, for the first time in a long time, the UFC boss’ usual playbook isn’t working as it ordinarily does. The more White commits to the bit (and the more Jones tweets through it at 2 a.m. to let you know he definitely isn’t bothered), the more ridiculous this saga becomes and the more voraciously the MMA fan base revolts against what its being fed.
It’s OK though, because honestly? All of this is pretty hilarious.
Martin: Have you ever had to sit through one of those wildly uncomfortable family get-togethers where at least one person has to spout off with an opinion on politics, religion, or some other touchy subject that erupts into a huge argument, food spilled, a table turned over, and at least one person either ostracized or even disowned by the end of it? Think of that brilliant scene from The Bear season 2 when Mikey got into an argument with his mother’s boyfriend during Christmas dinner and started launching forks at him.
For our purposes, put Dana White in Bob Odenkirk’s role as Lee and the MMA media are throwing forks at the UFC CEO just hoping to get a different response than the one we’ve already gotten time after time after time and he’s promising that we’re going to get f*cking rocked.
If you haven’t figured it out already, White believes Jon Jones is not only the greatest fighter who’s ever lived, but he’s also the current pound-for-pound best fighter on the planet. And you know what? He’s right.
Now, before your head explodes, allow me to explain. White is right because pound-for-pound rankings are totally subjective, there’s no criteria to follow, and really it’s just a list made up to start arguments like these so he’s entitled to that opinion. But what’s far more likely is White declared that Jones was the top pound-for-pound fighter at some post-fight press conference, he got push-back from some reporters, and he’s just continued to dig his heels in that much deeper to prove his point because that’s what he does.
It’s obvious by now that White isn’t going to change his mind no matter how much we argue with him. You can point out that Jones isn’t as active. You can say that he doesn’t have the same level of wins over he past few years as a fighter like Islam Makhachev. You can question the logic about Jones’ dominance versus fighters like Alex Pereira. You can even joke that maybe Jones has some incriminating evidence he’s using to make White turn into his biggest backer.
Whatever the case, White isn’t suddenly going to reverse course, so why bother to keep asking? This isn’t a subject that requires closure. There’s plenty more to talk about when it comes to what’s happening in the UFC than whether or not Jones is the pound-for-pound best fighter in the sport. And it seems rather clear that the more you push White on this subject, the harder he’s going to fire back that Jones is the best and we’re all crazy.
What’s actually insane is that we’re still having this discussion at all, because truthfully, it doesn’t matter. But inevitably, we’ll just keep throwing forks while everybody else at the table just wants to eat already.
Lee: Like my colleagues, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to get into Dana White’s head and it’s possible that I’ve gone too far because I started to think… maybe he’s right about all this?
Let’s be clear here: I’m as annoyed as anyone that we’re not getting Jones vs. Aspinall anytime soon, if ever, and Jones’ rationalizing of the situation has been abominable. I’m also not entirely sure why White has been banging the “Jones is No. 1” drum so incessantly unless it’s some kind of bizarre bit of performance art, which, if so, respect.
But my best guess is that White truly believes what he’s saying and—based on his criteria at least—he has the facts to back it up.
It’s true that Jones has never lost. It’s true that he ran through the No. 1-ranked heavyweight on the UFC roster at the time when he demolished Ciryl Gane (“on the UFC roster” doing some heavy lifting in this sentence). It’s true that winning titles in two divisions should earn you serious pound-for-pound cred. And yes, it’s probably true that if you place Jones and any other professional fighter in the world in a locked room with only one way out that he’s the guy who probably walks out of that absurdly specific scenario with his head held high.
For years, Jones was the de facto answer when discussing pound-for-pound greatness, and if we’re being generous with interpreting White’s fervor it’s simply that he’s seen no good reason to bump him from the top of the ladder. Islam Makhachev? Hey, two of your title defenses are against a 145er. Alex Pereira? Didn’t you get KTFO last year? Alexandre Pantoja? Ilia Topuria? Belal Muhammad? Dricus du Plessis? Do more. You’re not on Jones’ level.
Again, I’m playing Dana’s advocate here, and other than dinging Jones for inactivity, it’s actually an easy job. Why should White earnestly engage in this particular conversation when he has a fight to promote and an all-time great that he can still push as the most dominant force in combat sports? We can argue until our faces are blue that Jones doesn’t deserve to be considered No. 1 pound-for-pound anymore. But one thing we can’t do is objectively prove it.
So there you have it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to hit the craps table with the Nelk Boys.
Following his biggest win to date this past weekend, Caio Borralho finds himself in the top five of the UFC’s middleweight division.
The Contender Series alum capitalized on his first main event opportunity by beating Jared Cannonier to inject some new blood into the mix at 185-pounds.
Though he would like to be in the title picture already, it appears likely that Borralho will need one more big win in order to really solidify his case, due to Sean Strickland being in line to challenge Dricus Du Plessis next.
The Brazilian has now targeted the next best thing to fighting for the belt and that means facing off with the division’s biggest name.
Caio Borralho Says Fighting Israel Adesanya Means He Gets To Face A Legend
For the first time in a long time, Israel Adesanya’s next outing inside the Octagon will not be in a UFC title fight.
“The Last Stylebender” said after his defeat at UFC 305 that he isn’t going anywhere just yet, meaning that he will go back to joining the list of contenders.
In a recent interview with Submission Radio, Borralho made a strong case for why he should be next for the former champion.
When you look at the other top fights in the rankings right now, Adesanya has already faced many of them aside from Brendan Allen and Nassourdine Imavov, who are already matched up with one another as the #5 contender pointed out.
Borralho said that he wants this fight next because it would be a big moment for his own legacy to face someone that has represented the very best of the weight class for such a long time.
“Let’s see, I want to fight him [Adesanya]. I think it will be a good fight on my resume and if the UFC wants me to do one more fight before I go to the belt, I think this is the fight to make. Why not fight a guy that is a legend of this sport and that was so dominant in his prime, so definitely a guy that I want to face just because nothing personal but just because it makes sense right now for him and it makes sense for me too.”
Borralho then went on to explain how Adesanya has fought all the other names in the top 8 of the division, except Imavov and Allen – who are going to fight one another.
Hence, the only realistic fight for Adesanya is the Brazilian, and Borralho is only too happy to oblige.
Read also: MMA Analyst Believes Israel Adesanya Following ‘The Khabib Model’ Might Have Led To Dricus Du Plessis Loss
Continue Reading Caio Borralho Makes Convincing Argument To Fight Israel Adesanya Next: ‘So Dominant In His Prime…’ at MMA News.
File under: Mmafighting.com | Leave a comment »