Alexander Volkanovski on Upcoming Brian Ortega Fight

How was it working with Brian Ortega? To be honest mate, he doesn't say much. He doesn't say much. Look, I don't know. I'm a bit over him to be honest. A bit over him? Yeah, just a couple of things. I just think he's fake. I think he's fake and I don't believe his shit. That's just sort of how it is with me. That's what I think. When you say fake, in what way is he fake? I just think he plays a nice guy and some of the shit he says. I just think it's all bullshit. I guess you can watch the show and sort of see with little things. I know even with a couple of things. I don't think he's that bad of a guy. Maybe I'm just looking for things to hate on him. I'm sure you are. Probably. I'm just sitting there and being like, nah, fuck Brian Ortega. I'm going to find something to hate him for. Maybe that's what it was. Still, yeah. Little things I was just like, yeah. But like I said, it's not hard to get under his skin. Even me just saying that, I guarantee he's boiling up. Maybe that's going to be strategy for my next fight because I know how easily he's triggered. So I'm just going to be like, hey, Brian, fuck you. That's it. When are you guys scheduled to fight? At the end of the series? Yeah, yeah. So when it is. So from what I'm told, I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble saying this. I'm not sure. But I think it's like September, early September. So you'll be fighting him sometime in September and that will be in the United States? Yeah, I'm guessing. Yeah. Nice. Interesting. It's a great fight. Like if you look at the fight on paper, especially after his fight with the Korean zombie, it's a fun fight to watch. Yeah, he definitely looked good in that fight. He surprised me in that fight too. He definitely changed his game a little bit and fought a different fight that I wasn't expecting. But again, you know, I'm confident in my abilities. I just believe I'll be too much. And the beautiful thing about it, I can say what I want, but I get to prove it soon. I wish I got to prove it much when I was scheduled to fight. But obviously that didn't happen. But you know, I'll prove that very soon anyway. So it's all good. It's a special division, man. That 145 is a really special division because there's so much talent, man. It's I think it's hard to say what the it's between. I think it's between 55 and 45, like the most amount of like real top level talent. But yeah, 45 is just so filled, so filled with guys. Yeah, there is. A lot of guys are coming. Even some of the guys that are higher in the rankings, like just starting to come up like there's a lot of dangerous guys. And that's what that's a beautiful thing about it. Like that motivates me. I'm looking forward to it. You know, these are the guys I want. I want these guys that are people. I love being the underdog as well. Even though I'm champ, you're still going to have the doubters and all that. And I love that. You know what I mean? I want to be the underdog and you know, I want them doubters and I love proving people wrong. You like being the underdog. Yeah, I do. I do, man. It's kind of hard to be the underdog when you're the fucking champ. Yeah, yeah, it's true. I know. But I mean, I guess I wouldn't say underdog, but I mean the doubters maybe, maybe. And I use the doubters as fuel. So I love it. Again, I love proving them wrong. And if I was an underdog for this fight, you know, I don't know if I would be, but I mean, if I was, I would not care one bit. I'd be like, oh, at least I get to make my boys or whoever's betting on me more money. Let's go. You know, it's all more good. Now you guys were supposed to, you were scheduled to fight, but then you got COVID. And when you got COVID, when you got tested, initially when you got tested, you didn't feel sick, right? I mean, before, because we'll get tested a fair bit. So I'm guessing before we went into the bubble, I must have got it from someone or whatever. And then, you know, a few days later, we got tested a couple of times. It didn't pop up. But then we got tested one of the days. And that was like right at the end of my camp, like, because I went there a bit early for Brad Riddell to corner or be with him because he fought the week before me. So I did my last week of training, hard training in Vegas after traveling and doing all that. And then I got COVID, must have had it trained like hard, you know, we get stuck into it. So I did back to back because the schedule got tightened up because we arrived a bit later in the week. So back to back, really, really solid sessions while I probably had COVID. But I mean, I sort of had started getting headaches and that before I was like, man, I'm getting headaches. That's Vegas, maybe, you know, just dehydrated and whatnot. But but yeah, then I tested positive and then I started getting the symptoms after that. And when you say like your schedule tightened up, so you guys have a very rigid program that you follow no matter what, like this day you're doing this. Yeah, exactly. So we got, you know, we got a few hard sessions. And when I say hard sessions, you know, they're, you know, they're mind blowing type of sessions off for some people that that will the watch it. But you know, that's just our schedule. And usually have good rest in between them. And like, that's, you know, you need to have the rest. You want good recovery. So you're able to do them, you know, and this camp was beautiful. We did it. Absolutely. We nailed the camp. And I was doing some of the harder sessions, but I was recovering on point. My recovery was on point. I was like, man, like, you know, I'm getting older, but I feel like the camp's getting easier. How's that happening right now? But that that week got tightened up. So I ended up doing a couple of these really, really high loaded sessions. They end up being like back to back, where usually I would have like high, low session, high, low session. What was the decision? What made the decision to do high back to back? It was just, again, it was just more the fact that, you know, we just need to do a couple. I still don't think it was that, but I felt fine while I was doing that. I didn't think nothing of it, but I'm just because I end up getting pretty rattled from the COVID. That's why I was like, man, like, maybe my immune system was down at the end of camp, obviously dieting and all that type of stuff. But I felt fine. But, you know, I'm pretty sure I started feeling some of the symptoms before I was getting into them hard sessions as well. Yeah. All the fighters that I know that got it bad, it was all the same sort of situation when they were in camp, really beaten up like Cody Garbrandt. Same thing with Cody had COVID for probably weeks and was training with it before he even got tested. And then they're like, bro, you got COVID. And he's like, oh, well, that explains a lot. And then, you know, he was pretty fucked up for a few months, but he had trained like real hard. Well, that's obviously going to play a big factor. And the thing is, like, you hear and then you hear like the hazmat, you know, sort of situations, Cody Garbrandt. So like, we wanted to keep an eye on it, but you know what I mean? And that's why we got it. And then they end up finding out you got the pneumonia. And then, you know, then the symptoms, I felt the symptoms a fair bit. But then then I got that pneumonia and then like the sort of the infection just started getting a little bit worser. So I ended up getting a pinky, coughing up like pinky bloody sort of stuff. And then the blood just got more and more. So then we went back and that's when they got me on the medication and then, yeah, because I was coughing up blood. And all told how sick, like how long were you sick for? Probably would be maybe 10 days or something. Maybe like seven or 10 days. Did they do IV vitamins or anything like that? Yeah. Once I was in the hospital, they were doing that. Yeah. But I mean, as soon as I got on the medication, you know, for dexamethasone, like my large just improvements, like straight away. But right now, obviously I've got to take it to worry about and watch this season and watch everyone can watch me, stir him up and give him shit. What is the pressure like of hanging out with a guy that you're going to fight for five weeks? You're just hanging out day in, day out, seeing each other all the time. Well, we talk about it. I was talking about how I adjust and adapt to things that in front of me, even in the fight. I'm just like that 24 seven. You know what I mean? I'm the type of guy that whatever I'm doing, that's it. I'm me. You know, I forget I'm a fucking UFC champ. I forget I'm even a fighter half the time. You know, because once I'm home, I'm daddy. That's it. And that's all I, you know, but that's how I am. But I went in there and I just knew I ever want a reality TV show. He's going to be there, whatever. But it was funny because again, you're trying to get reads on him and things like that. But again, I just think he's fucking awkward. He's awkward. Do they? What do you reckon? What do you get out of it? Yeah, that's for sure. He definitely wasn't a fan of me by the end of the show. Really? He almost got fired for one of the pranks I played on him. But we weren't allowed to. You almost got fired or he almost got fired. You almost got fired for it. Which one was that? Really? That was the code. We had to take five COVID tests a week. So obviously there's pranks on the show. This won't make the TV show anyway. But I did pretend to put his COVID test on my arse. The mouth. The mouth. It was a dream. It didn't really happen. So we're pretending to piss on his like, you know, his signs and all that. We've got photos of us like just throwing up again, a bit of laughing, a bit of banter. But we know how he carries on. There was a photo that he put. You put it up, didn't you? Of the keys. Yeah, we pretended to take his car. But then he pretended we just had a photo of the keys and supposedly he had the fucking the shit and like he was like, oh, fucking for Craig. I'm like, I'm in the photo too. Why aren't you saying you fucking for me? Yeah, he's like, he touches the car or we'll fight him. But I mean, again, like whether whether he was just like, you know, going along with it or whatever it was, but or he's just easily triggered. I don't know. But like we'll so we started realizing that. So we just we just started like playing on that a fair bit. Hey, knowing that he's easily triggered, there might be a route to this next spot as well. What happened with the covid test swab? Like you took a photo pretending that you were sticking up. Can we get this up or? Yeah, yeah. Air drop it to Jamie. Get the get the photo of us pissing as well. Do you got the one of this? You guys are grown, man. Get the photo of us pissing. Yeah. And the thing with me with the thing up my ass. Yeah. Get that. Mac Pro, Jamie. Yep. MVP. Oh, there it is. Something happened. All right. But again, just have a bit of a laugh. You know, maybe we'll have that one or she's on the wrong computer. So I got this one. I mean, it's pretty lighthearted. You know, like I wouldn't really stick his oral covid swab up my ass. How could you even get a hold of it? I mean, isn't that stuff controlled? That's what I understand. Like where the fuck is the nurse? Well, I just waited till the nurse had to go to the bathroom. You know, swab. There it goes. Oh, my God. That cheeky smirk too, right? They actually almost fired me for this one. So I probably crossed the line a little too much. But remember, this is a different swap. Just in case you do still get in trouble. Yeah, this is fake, ladies and gentlemen. It's just a joke. Allegedly. It might have been a flavored test. You never know. LOL. So what did they say to you? Well, I mean, I did have some ideas for some covid pranks because obviously we're trying to get them. But they did tell me because they spent so much money on covid testing. I was like, that's that's a line we can't cross. But I just couldn't resist. Craig did it anyway. I was just sitting. That's probably not on the field. The whole test was sitting in the same section. Yeah, I get it. Listen, makes sense to me. You got to do what you got to do. But it's part of the fun of the show, right? It's fucking with everybody. Exactly. The whole pranks and stuff like that. I mean, you said shit through each other. And the more conflict there is, the better the ratings are, the better the show does, the better it is for everybody when you guys have a big fight. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan experience.