A.J. McKee thinks Alexander Volkanvoski wants no part of him.
McKee (18-0 MMA, 18-0 BMMA), who captured the Bellator featherweight title by choking out Patricio Freire in the grand prix final last July, has since called out UFC featherweight champion Volkanovski on multiple occasions.
MMA Junkie asked Volkanovski (23-1 MMA, 10-0 UFC) about McKee shortly after he won the grand prix, and Volkanovski warned McKee that there are levels to MMA.
Alexander Volkanovski gives props to A.J. McKee for becoming the Bellator featherweight champion, but says the UFC level is just “a different ball game.”@Farah_Hannoun‘s interview: https://t.co/oK3C9lizTu pic.twitter.com/znB1ndCZoI
— MMA Junkie (@MMAJunkie) August 5, 2021
McKee isn’t the first Bellator champ to call out Volkanovski. When Freire was champion, he issued a challenge to Volkanovski, who asked UFC president Dana White to make the cross-promotion fight happen. McKee sees the opposite happening with him.
“He won’t respond to me,” McKee told MMA Junkie Radio. “He responded to ‘Pitbull.’ I’m waiting for him to respond to me. The day he responds to me, he’s signing his will.”
He continued, “Actually I quoted something with him and Dana. I asked him specifically. I said, ‘Hey, how come when Patricio was champion you responded to him? Now I’m barking up your name, and you won’t respond to me. No disrespect to small people, but it’s like battle of the midgets, you know what I mean? F*cking what’s up? You don’t want to respond to this big boy? What’s going on? I want this smoke. … In due time, his time is coming. It will come.”
Volkanovski defends his title against Chan Sung Jung in Saturday’s UFC 273 main event, and McKee thinks the champ is the better striker than “The Korean Zombie.”
“Zombie’s hands are all right. They’re pretty good. They’re decent,” McKee said. “But I honestly feel like Volkanovski has the advantage a little bit there. He’s more of a power puncher, a little more methodical on his feet – until you step in front of me. Then it’s a different story. He’s got long arms. I don’t think people realize that. Even though he’s a small dude, he’s got long arms, so it’s being cognitive to things like that.”
McKee is set to rematch Freire in the main event of next week’s Bellator 277 on April 15 at SAP Center in San Jose, Calif.
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