UFC 318 adding Kevin Holland – Daniel Rodriguez

UFC 318 goes down on July 19th in New Orleans and today we learned about a really fun matchup in the welterweight division that’s been added to the card. Kevin K was the first to report that 14th ranked welterweight Kevin Holland (28-13, 1 NC) will be defending his spot in the rankings against “D-Rod” Daniel Rodriguez (19-5).

This is a fight that was actually supposed to take place at UFC 279 in September 2022. Of course, Khamzat Chimaev massively missed weight for his fight with Nate Diaz which caused the entire fight card to shift. Holland ended up fighting and losing to Chimaev while Rodriguez fought Li Jingliang and won a split decision.

After that win over Li, Rodriguez hit tough times losing three fights in a row. However, he’s bounced back well since the end of last year with a decision win over Alex Morono then a big time knockout win over Santiago Ponzinibbio in May.

Kevin Holland will be making the walk for the fourth time already in 2025 on July 19th. Holland said that he wanted to fight up to six times this year and it looks like he’s going to. Holland started the year with a loss to Reinier De Ridder at middleweight prompting him to drop back down to 170.

Holland said that he’s really dedicated to this welterweight run and that’s shown in his last two fights. He defeated Gunnar Nelson back in May and then just a few weeks ago at UFC 316, he submitted Vicente Luque in the second round of their fight. Holland called out some bigger names, but the desire to fight again soon won out and now he’s facing D-Rod.