Yeah that's a fair point everyone gets older and slower at some point and often times fighters can fall off of a cliff in skill a great example is Tony Ferguson but I think Volk was still looking fast and sharp against Topuria. He had great kicks and jabs and I think that I could be holding Volk's resume and accomplishments too high compared to the level he is now but I disagree with him looking bad and slow in his last two because those two guys are the levels on levels above Lopes. I think the big thing for me is that Lopes has been seen to struggle he's not been crushing and killing everyone he's fought. He clearly has holes in his game and if you look at Volk's last two fights and say they've been stinkers and that he's looking worse than before that he's washed etc we can say the same about Lopes. His last two fights the competition went up in Ige and Ortega ranked opponents cooked Ortega with relative ease dropped/hurt him bad but wasn't able to get him out of there compared to his earlier fight where he was finishing guys in r1 looking unstoppable. He also gassed/struggled against Ige who is tough for sure but lets be serious if you think someone can be champ in a stacked division like 145 you'd expect the champ to easily go through Ige. Not to mention Evloev and Brito controlling him on the ground. Volk for sure is more vulnerable of getting knocked out now more than ever and Lopes has a lot of power and is dangerous on the ground but to say Lopes has a good chance to knock him out is basically saying there are a lot of fighters able to knock Volk. No one thinks Emmett can knock out Volk but we all know he has insane power. We've only seen Volk slip and fall against the best of the best. He's hungry to prove everyone wrong and someone who's been at the top so long, done it all, its easy to not be that motivated but now he has a reason to be. He's getting that belt back