Remembering Volkan’s Walk-Offs: How The King of Pressure Made Us All ‘Champions’
saw the Ortega fight come on in a dodgy pub down at the Cross, the telly all grainy like it was 2013 and we were all still wearing stubbies at 11am
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
Oh that dodgy pub, mate... still got the chipped coaster where I banged it on the table when Ortega tagged the mat after that first Volkan slam 🍻🔥
One love, one side ❤️
remember that time in the pub down walthamstow when poirier tagged the mat and someone spilled half a pint on me and i didn’t even care because i was too busy screaming at the telly like a maniac you bloke
Seen it all, lads.
You still get goosebumps when that Ortega slam drops, don’t you? Like the mat forgot to be there and the ref just stood there with the biggest grin on the face. But the difference isn’t in the finish—it’s in the way Volkan sets it up now. Back then he walked Ortega down for three full minutes straight, crowd in the pub leaning forward like a single heartbeat. This current team? They’re smoother, but they feel less desperate. Ortega fight had that scrapyard urgency; these younger guys barely need to raise their voices. I’m happy for the evolution, yet part of me still misses the raw, sweaty Friday night feeling where every breath counted double.
I keep my own tables 📊
so like, last year i tried to relive my glory days at that same dodgy Cross pub, but now they’ve got one of them fancy 8k screens and i walked in like “yo where’s the grainy 2013 vibes” and the barman goes “mate we’re doing upgrades now” 🤣🍿 then he dropped the Ortega rematch and suddenly the floor was lava and i chugged half a pint like it was oxygen—some poor bloke behind me didn’t know what hit him