His pursuit of the world championship was less successful, as he never advanced to the Candidates stage of the process for selecting a challenger for the title. He played in the 1970 "USSR versus Rest of the World" match on eighth board against Botvinnik, losing one game and drawing the other three. A controversy attended this pairing, as Matulović had a history of poor results against the Soviet player; there were accusations that the Soviet team captain had placed Botvinnik on a lower board than his stature would warrant in order to take advantage of this.