Funnily enough, he and Ilia did a polygraph test together and one of the questions Aleksandre got was if he thought that he could be Ilia; he said yes and the test said that he was telling the truth; it could just be that he as a fighter is just that confident in himself or it could be since he knows Ilia so well and has trained with him, that he knows he could beat himImagine he's better than Ilia??