Alexander Volkanovski believes Dustin Poirier will beat Justin Gaethje at UFC 291

Alexander Volkanovski believes Dustin Poirier will beat Justin Gaethje again when the two lightweights meet at UFC 291, and 'The Great' says he'd be interested in fighting for the BMF championship that will be on the line at that event.

The 34-year-old is working diligently to prepare for his featherweight title defence against interim champion Yair Rodriguez at UFC 290, but given that he recently suffered a competitive loss to Lightweight Champion Islam Makhachev, Volkanovski is understandably keeping an eye on developments in the lightweight division.

In a rematch of their thrilling 2018 fight, Poirier and Gaethje will be the main event of UFC 291, and while Volkanovski gives "The Diamond" the advantage, he wasn't ready to write off Gaethje's prospects after his most recent performance.

“If I had to lean towards someone I feel like I’d start leaning towards Poirier,” Volkanovski said on Israel Adesanya’s YouTube channel. “He obviously won the last time they fought, and I think I’d probably lean towards Dustin.“

“But I mean, you can’t tell me that Justin Gaethje can’t catch him. And then you’ve seen even in Justin’s last fight, his fitness held on obviously fighting [Rafael] Fiziev... So he might even be there the whole time, but I just think that Dustin can go the five rounds and he probably gets more and more technical as the fight goes on.”