In July 2022, after his third win over Max Holloway, Alexander Volkanovski's featherweight rating reached 2092, the highest it has ever been.
Then he went up to lightweight and lost twice to Islam Makhachev, a decision in February 2023 and a first-round knockout that October. Those losses came back down with him. When a fighter changes weight we carry his rating across, because results at another weight are still evidence about him, so the Makhachev fights cost him at featherweight as well. He did win in between, knocking out Yair Rodriguez in July 2023, but by the start of 2024 he was a long way below his peak.
His one featherweight loss came in February 2024, when Ilia Topuria knocked him out in the second round at UFC 298. That fight took another 82 points off his estimate and left his published rating, the number on the board, at 1663, its lowest since early 2018.
After that he was out for 14 months. He came back at UFC 314 in April 2025 and beat Diego Lopes for the vacant title, then beat him again at UFC 325 in Sydney this year. The first win added 70 points, the second 44. He is now No. 1 at featherweight on 1800.
So the comeback is real. But the numbers tell a quieter story than the belt does.
His estimate today is 1998, which is 94 points below where it was in 2022. Both wins over Lopes were clear unanimous decisions, scored 82.8 and 80.5. Neither reached our line for a dominant win. Between 2018 and 2023 he stopped Jeremy Kennedy, Chad Mendes, Chan Sung Jung and Yair Rodriguez, and six of his 13 featherweight wins scored 85 or more. He is winning in a different way now, by margins rather than stoppages, against a contender he had already beaten once.
None of that is a criticism. Getting back to the top of a division after three losses in a year, two of them by knockout, takes some doing. The Index just says the Volkanovski of 2026 has proved slightly less than the Volkanovski of 2022, which is what you would expect.
One thing on the board needs explaining. Volkanovski's fading trail, the range his rating could still move through, is the widest in the featherweight top five. A wide trail usually means a fighter we haven't seen much of. Not here: he has 14 fights at featherweight. It is wide because of his trips to lightweight and the nearly nine months since he last fought, and both add uncertainty to any rating. The published number is the estimate minus that uncertainty, so it holds him down. On estimates alone he leads Evloev by 40 points. On the board it is ten. The trail narrows again once he fights.
He defends against Movsar Evloev at UFC 333 on 24 October.
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