Born in October 1988, Volkov is one of the tallest fighters in heavyweight history and made his name long before the UFC, headlining Bellator and winning the promotion’s heavyweight title in the mid-2010s. He joined the UFC in 2016 and has spent nearly a decade as a top-10 fixture, with 50 pro fights on his ledger. In a 2025 UFC feature ahead of UFC 321, he said he’d moved full-time to Las Vegas a couple of years back, citing access to the UFC Performance Institute and the city’s Russian community. He’s been honest about how he books fights now: “I fought six and seven times in a year when I was younger, but now I don’t need this.”
He’s a range striker who weaponizes his reach — front kicks, body kicks, leg kicks, a stiff jab — then mixes in knees and elbows once opponents close the distance. He lands 4.78 significant strikes per minute at 63.81% accuracy, elite numbers for a heavyweight, and finishes most of his wins by knockout, 24 in 40. The hole in his game has always been on the mat. Tom Aspinall submitted him in 2022, and Jailton Almeida controlled long stretches of their bout before Volkov took a split decision. When he keeps the fight standing and moving, few heavyweights solve the geometry.
The run that put him back in the title picture started with a first-round TKO of Jairzinho Rozenstruik in June 2022, followed by a first-round stoppage of Alexandr Romanov and a second-round submission of Tai Tuivasa at UFC 293. He out-pointed Sergei Pavlovich in June 2024, dropped a split decision to Ciryl Gane at UFC 310 that plenty of media outlets scored the other way, then beat Almeida by split decision at UFC 321 in October 2025. At UFC 328 in May 2026, he picked apart Waldo Cortes-Acosta over three rounds with kicks and jabs to take a unanimous decision.
He’s done waiting in line. After the Cortes-Acosta win, he told the Newark crowd, “Gane, I beat him before, the judges robbed me. Pereira is not a heavyweight. I should fight for this title.” With Aspinall still recovering from the no-contest against Gane at UFC 321 and the contender picture wide open, Volkov has built about as strong a case as a 37-year-old can. Whether the UFC sees it that way is the question that defines what’s left of his career.