For the uninitiated, it might sound strange that Alexander Volkanovski on Saturday will put his featherweight championship on the line against Max Holloway, a man he already beat twice in the last three years.

“Some people might see it as an insult,” Volkanovski told The Post over the phone this week, “but it’s not. It shows you how good Max Holloway is.”

The champ has a point. Holloway (23-6, 12 finishes) is that good. So, too, is Volkanovski (24-1, 15 finishes), who took the title from the Hawaiian in December 2019 in a competitive but clear decision victory. The rematch the following July was significantly closer, ultimately coming down to how the judges scored the final round in a hotly-debated split decision victory for the Aussie.

Two convincing victories later for each man, and here they are again ready to square off in the octagon a third time as the co-main event at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for UFC 276 on pay-per-view (10 p.m. ET).

Volkanovski acknowledges the situation of him facing an opponent against whom he’s 2-0 — even if Holloway is a highly-respected former champion himself — is “weird” and “unusual.” But he points to the way his greatest professional rival held his ground since their two-fight series as justification. In a pair of 2021 bouts, Holloway shattered his own UFC record with 445 significant strikes landed in a masterclass decision win over Calvin Kattar and followed with a hard-earned win on the scorecards against Yair Rodriguez, two of the best-regarded 145-pounders at the time.

“[Holloway has] got a third chance because he showed that he’s the No. 1 contender, and he didn’t let anyone take that away from him,” Volkanovski said. “And people still want to see it because they regard him as still one of the best.”

Despite the Volkanovski defeats, Holloway says he feels he “did enough in both” fights to earn the nod from the judges. The laid-back ex-champ doesn’t put up a stink over the issue, though. Many fans and MMA observers agree, particularly with the rematch, a key component that made this unlikely trilogy make sense.

“If the two fights before this went so convincingly, we wouldn’t be here for a third, right?” posits Holloway in speaking with The Post earlier this week.

Holloway is loath to get too specific about the way he and his team approached the first fight compared to the second, other than to say “there’s a big difference between the way we attacked the first fight and the way we attacked the second fight.”

True enough. Typically a slower starter — only compared to the uber-high volume of strikes he can reach late in fights — Holloway in the first fight found himself outlanded by Volkanovski in each of the first three rounds, with the Aussie reaching his peak in the lopsided third. Volkanovski, powered by leg kicks that kept Holloway outside of ideal range, had already built a nearly insurmountable lead on the scorecards by the time Holloway started mounting the makings of a comeback — one that fell far short of a serious threat.

“I was locked in. I was ready. I was prepared,” Volkanovski said of how he felt in the octagon that night. “Everything was firing. I was just a step ahead. I was sharp [in] every exchange. I won pretty much every exchange, and I was just a step ahead. It was still competitive, but I showed that my preparation was enough.”

Even before Volkanovski’s coronation that night in Las Vegas, he had a feeling he might have to do it all over again anyway. Holloway had won 14 in a row at 145 pounds, including three consecutive title defenses against Jose Aldo, Brian Ortega and Frankie Edgar — two former champions sandwiched around one of the current elites at featherweight. The immediate rematch that was scheduled came as little surprise.

“When you’re versing someone that’s been dominating the division and people were trying to say he was the GOAT of the division at that time, you expect them to get an immediate rematch,” Volkanovski said. “I was definitely expecting that.”

What wasn’t so expected was Holloway’s approach to start the second fight, which came amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Arab Emirates. Though not without precedent, Holloway attacked with more urgency from the jump by solidly claiming the first two rounds on the cards. Volkanovski said his team had “expected the same style” as was typical of Holloway but that “he threw us off guard, the fact that he changed it up so much.”

The numbers were close, but the Hawaiian clearly landed the more impactful strikes, especially later in each round. The champ knew the fight wasn’t playing out as he needed it to, so he reached within and gave himself an internal pep talk before the middle frame of the scheduled five-rounder.

“The first two rounds caught me by surprise; definitely did,” Volkanovski said. “So I really needed to dig deep and really needed to talk to myself, have that conversation and be like, ‘Hey, you have to do something now. He takes one more round, that’s it. Game over. You need these next three. I don’t care how you feel. I don’t care if you’re not firing, I don’t care if your reactions aren’t there. You force something. You make something happen.’ These are the conversations I was having in my head. Not many people can do what I did with such a slow start. That’s what separates me from the rest.”

Indeed, the fight turned from that point, with Volkanovski cranking up his own output while more successfully limiting Holloway’s heavier punches. He claimed the next two rounds from each judge to tie the fight, with a close fifth edging the fight for the Aussie in the end.

While Holloway was left with little choice but to re-establish his case as the most deserving challenger — a long shot, given that there had never been a UFC trilogy of championship fights in which the same fighter won the first two — Volkanovski went out and solidified his case as the best at 145. A gutsy, clear-cut victory over Ortega last September and an utter dismantling of “The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung in April for his first finish since 2018 largely silenced doubters who swore Holloway was the rightful winner of the rematch.

Still, many consider Holloway a sort of 1B to Volkanovski’s 1A in the featherweight pecking order. There’s a hunger from the masses to, perhaps, offer a more definitive conclusion. The stakes are obvious for Holloway: A win makes him the champion once again, moving him closer to his stated goal of becoming the featherweight GOAT — he was never in the camp who felt he deserved that title over the legendary Aldo.

Less obvious is what Volkanovski has to gain, although the champion says he sees the upside of a third win over Holloway.

“Beating Max three times, especially when people have so much respect for him as a fighter, really just adds to my legacy,” Volkanovski said. “The greater people think he is and the greater people think any of my opponents are, the better it is for me.”

Volkanovski, 33, moving to 3-0 would almost surely slam the door shut on Holloway’s chances at regaining his crown. 

A Holloway win, however, opens new doors. On the subject of potentially returning the favor with an immediate rematch against Volkanovski, the 30-year-old Hawaiian defers to UFC brass, stating “I’m not a matchmaker.” 

It’s not a thought Volkanovski wants to entertain — winning is all he prefers to envision before the fight — but he made it clear “it would be ridiculous not to” grant him the next title shot in such a scenario.

“That’s not where it’s gonna go,” Volkanovksi said, “but I think you’d be silly not to [make the immediate rematch]. This [fight Saturday] isn’t a decider. This is just him getting another chance. The only way this can be a decider is if we end up making this the best out of five. 

“But let’s not worry about that because I won’t put anyone in a position to even try and rob me of that anyway.”