After taking a burger to the face while sharing a meal with Hasbulla, Alex Volkanovski and the MMA social media sensation have come under fire.
In an episode of Cooking with Volk, the UFC featherweight champion and Hasbulla were whipping it up in the kitchen and fixing some delicious-looking burgers to enjoy. The two could be seen chopping up cucumbers and tomatoes, as well as adding an assortment of spices into a tea pitcher to create a “secret sauce”.
At the end of the episode, the duo sat down to enjoy the burgers. Hasbulla would eventually stand up and smash his into Volkanovski’s face in what was a light-hearted and funny moment, which would surprisingly trigger a lot of negativity towards Hasbulla from fans.
Alex Volkanovski admits to planning the Hasbulla burger incident
Appearing on The MMA Hour, Alex Volkanovski seemed surprised the prank caused so much backlash for Hasbulla. Wanting to clear the air, he would admit it was all staged.
“I’ll be straight-up with this. Everyone does the Hasbulla thing and then obviously gets punched in the face and all that type of stuff,” Volkanovski began. “So, this was actually planned. I planned this just for a bit of a laugh.”
“The reason why I’m bringing this up,” Alex Volkanovksi continued. “Is because he ended up copping a little bit about it, especially with his religion and wasting food and all that type of stuff, things like that.”
“So I felt bad because I put him in that position. I told him with my burger, ‘You can hit there,’ and I ended up eating the burger so it actually didn’t go to waste. You actually see me in the video eating that burger.”
Alex Volkanovski would then go on to claim that he believed a lot of people thought the incident was real because of “how good his acting skills were”.
“I think a lot of people obviously thought it was real because of my acting skills,” He said. “How good was that? Everyone’s like, ‘Oh man, how’d you take that?’ It was planned. Sorry to ruin it for everyone, but I wanted to touch on that because when we’re dealing with Hasbulla and his team, they’re really cool, so I appreciate them doing that. I apologize for them copping a bit of hate about it.”
Volkanovski was last seen at UFC 276 where he picked up yet another decision victory against Max Holloway. Volkanovski has claimed that he’s the backup for the upcoming lightweight title fight between Islam Makhachev and the defending champion Charles Oliveira at UFC 280. Should either man fail to appear, or miss weight, ‘The Great’ expects to step up and try his hand at solidifying himself as one of the few double champions in UFC history.
What do you think about the hate Hasbulla has received for the burger prank, and do you think Alex Volkanovski will have to fill in at UFC 280?