Alexander Volkanovski may have a future as a professional football player after catching a long pass from legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady this week in Melbourne, Australia.
Volkanovski, who is scheduled to defend his UFC featherweight title against Ilia Topuria at UFC 298 this February, was in attendance for Friday’s special event, An Evening with Tom Brady. The reigning UFC champion was not expected to be part of the show, but Brady eventually called Volkanovski on stage.
After a quick toss back-and-forth, the future Hall of Fame quarterback asked Volkanovski to run a route into the crowd. Volkanovski happily obliged, running through the isle and catching an absolute rope of a throw by Brady. The Australian crowd went bonkers.
Check out the special Brady-to-Volkanovski connection in the above video player.
“See, there’s part of me that says, I can’t make it that easy, because they’re going to go back and be like, ‘That was easy, I caught a pass,’” Brady said. “So sometimes I like to make it a little hard. But not for him, because I love him! You’ve got to go right down the middle.”
Unfortunately for Volkanovski, he’s going to have to do more than just catch a pass from Tom Brady when he defends his 145-pound UFC title against Topuria at UFC 298. Topuria is undefeated in the UFC’s featherweight division and seems more than capable of shocking Volkanovski next month. Volkanovski is also coming off a knockout loss to UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev late last year so he’ll have a few questions to answer in his Octagon return.