By halting the momentum of an up-and-coming contender, Max Holloway proved the doubters wrong at UFC on ESPN 44 .
The Hawaiian veteran outstruck Arnold Allen for five rounds at in their featherweight headliner at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City Missouri, on Saturday night to earn a unanimous decision triumph and reaffirm his position as the best featherweight in the UFC not named Alexander Volkanovski. While “Blessed” is 0-3 against the reigning featherweight champion — including a clear-cut decision loss to Volkanovski in his last outing at UFC 276 — he also owns recent wins over featherweight contenders such as Allen, Calvin Kattar and Yair Rodriguez.
“You’re only as good as your last fight and I told you guys I had that [third Alexander Volkanovski] fight, that was the last taste that they had of me. I was here with that Kattar fight, I heard the same thing all over again — that Arnold’s going to be the guy who’s going to break my chin, who’s going to put [me] out, too slow, too old, whatever it is,” Holloway said at the post-fight press conference. “We went out there, we got to prove it. I wanted to go out there and hit and not get hit … ”
As long as Volkanovski remains featherweight champion, there isn’t a clear path for Holloway to get to the top of the division. While “Blessed” has been open to an eventual move to 155 pounds, he wasn’t making any commitments on Saturday night.
“We’ll see what happens,” Holloway said. “Never say never. We can talk to the UFC and see if they’d like to do that. They don’t like people splitting their time too much, but the beautiful thing is when you get the belt, you can do whatever you want, so that’s the main goal right now.”
As it currently stands, Volkanovski is scheduled to defend his featherweight belt against Rodriguez at UFC 290 on July 8. If Volkanovski wins, a fourth fight against the Aussie might be unlikely for Holloway, but he isn’t ruling anything out at this point in time.
“We’ll see what happens,” Holloway said. “Let the best man win. I get to be a fan in that fight in July, and we’ll see what happens. Never say never. We’ll be alright.”
However, if another title shot isn’t in the cards in the near future, Holloway is intrigued by the possibility of facing a fellow featherweight veteran: Chan Sung Jung.
“That is the only guy in my time with the older guys that I didn’t get to fight,” Holloway said. “I would love that fight. There’s a fight in my agent’s freaking country, Australia — Australia’s supposed to be happening sometime. We don’t know when. And if ‘Korean Zombie’ wants it, he can get it. I would love to fight him. That’s one of the guys I’ve been growing up and watching.”
Considering that he has been fighting the top talents at 145 pounds for approximately a decade, Holloway is surprised that he and “The Korean Zombie” haven’t already crossed paths.
“I’m kind of tripping out, how didn’t we fight yet? How did we not fight? If that’s one of the guys, then that’s one of the guys,” Holloway said. “I’d love to fight and share the Octagon with him. He’s one of the OGs that I didn’t get to fight yet. We came up in the same era and we didn’t fight each other, so if that’s it, that’s it.”
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