According to Alexander Volkov, it’s not up to him to decide if a referee is making the right call in the heat of the moment.
Volkov rocked Jairzinho Rozenstruik with a right hand during a frenetic exchange in the UFC Fight Night 207 headliner, then pummeled his foe with a barrage of power punches to get the finish at the 2:12 mark of Round 1. Although Rozenstruik’s mouthpiece was dislodged during the assault, he only went down to one knee before referee Herb Dean stepped in to halt the bout. That led to Rozenstruik briefly protesting the stoppage in the aftermath. Volkov believes he would have continued the onslaught had Dean not made his call.
“In the moment, I hit him, he was a little bit knocked out so he wasn’t being fully fresh. Anyway, it was a big opportunity to knock him out, to land because he was almost on the mat. I was ready to throw him down and continue my work,” Volkov said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference.
“The referee stopped the fight. [Rozenstruik] was in a bad position and he took some hard punches and he was a little bit knocked out. It’s not my fault but ask this of the referee, not me. I just did my job.”
Rozenstruik, meanwhile, released a statement on Twitter calling the stoppage “troubling.”
Regardless of how it ended, the victory keeps Volkov relevant in the heavyweight division, while Rozenstruik has lost three of his last four Octagon appearances. Volkov was coming off a first-round submission defeat at the hands of Tom Aspinall in March.
“I’m happy to come back with a win,” Volkov said. “I’m just happy. I did all the plan I had in this fight. Everything went perfect. Nothing went wrong. Everything’s good.”
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