Alexander Volkov realizes stakes high vs. friend Fabricio Werdum at UFC-London

LONDON – For Alexander Volkov, UFC Fight Night 127 represents an opportunity to catapult himself from heavyweight prospect to bona-fide contender.

Volkov (29-6 MMA, 3-0 UFC) faces former UFC champion Fabricio Werdum (23-7-1 MMA, 11-4 UFC) in the headliner of Saturday’s UFC Fight Pass-streamed event from The O2, and after securing back-to-back victories since joining the UFC, he feels much more at home under the bright lights of the octagon.

“My first fight in the UFC, I was really nervous,” Volkov admitted during today’s media day. “But now I feel really comfortable. I feel like I’m in my own place, so I will enjoy how the big (the event) is. I’ve been waiting for this all my career.”

Volkov might be a relatively new face to the UFC’s heavyweight roster, having fought just three times in the octagon to date. But he comes into the contest with significant experience outside the UFC, including winning the Bellator heavyweight title and Bellator Season 10 heavyweight tournament.

His initial arrival in the UFC was met with little fanfare, but Volkov quietly has gone about his work, picking up a hat-trick of wins against Timothy Johnson, Roy Nelson and Stefan Struve.

That performance against Struve in his most recent outing prompted people to sit up and take notice, as the rangy Russian scored a third-round TKO victory and earned “Fight of the Night” honors at UFC-Rotterdam last September.

Now, boosted by the confidence of his first stoppage victory in the UFC, Volkov faces Werdum, whose list of previous victims reads like a who’s who of heavyweight MMA.

The bout also has an interesting side story, with the pair having previously trained together. Werdum told MMAjunkie earlier this week that he’d never speak badly about his former training partner, and Volkov was similarly respectful.

“Really, we’re kind of friends, but both of us have something to prove to everybody,” Volkov said. “For me, Fabricio is the best heavyweight fighter in the UFC. But I can prove something to everybody (by winning), and I’ve come to use this chance.

“I can say there’s no nastiness in this fight. It’s just business for both of us, and if you win you could be fighting for the belt soon, because he has an impressive win streak, and I do, too.”

And the big Russian also conceded that whatever information he’d gleaned from those sessions with Werdum would need to be tempered with the knowledge that they were merely sparring in boxing gear, rather than throwing full-power in four-ounce gloves.

“For sure, training is different (to fighting),” Volkov said. “For example, we spar in big gloves, and you’re never going to knock your opponent out, so it’s some kind of work. But the main thing I took was he’s a really smart fighter. He can change tactics in fights, and that’s what I’ve been preparing for.”

The bout represents a major step up in competition, but Volkov says he needed to make that leap to face a top contender in order to showcase his own abilities and prove his worth as a future title challenger.

“I can’t fight someone who’s outside the top 10, because it won’t help me move up towards the belt,” he said. “So I have to fight someone who’s ranked higher than me, because I’m young in the UFC and young to start going towards the belt. So this fight had to happen, and that’s why I’m here.”

“I don’t want to be like ‘Give me the belt, right now,'” he continued. “But I hope that this fight will put me much closer to a title fight. Maybe the winner will be fighting for the belt (next).

“It will be a hard fight for me, for sure. I’m prepared for a hard fight. I’m prepared for a long fight, so my feeling is that I have to do a little bit more than I can in this fight. So if I show it, I will win.”

For more on UFC Fight Night 127, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.