Lethally efficient Holloway does his talking in the ring
‘Anti-McGregor’ takes 11-match win streak into title bout at UFC 218
DETROIT When Conor McGregor beat Jose Aldo for the UFC featherweight title back in late 2015, his Instagram feed filled up with photos of fancy cars and he started showing up at press conferences dressed like a Mexican drug lord.
When Max Holloway beat Aldo to win that same featherweight belt earlier this year, absolutely nothing changed.
He still posts pictures of cupcakes on social media, dresses in track suits and insists he’s the exact same guy he was back in 2013, when he lost a decision to McGregor and was sitting on a 3-3 record through his first six UFC fights. Nothing’s changed.
Well, almost nothing.
“When I was a kid I wanted to go to Disneyland, and now I’m able to take my son to Disneyland,” Holloway said this week from UFC 218 Media Day, where he was preparing for a rematch with Aldo tonight.
“I’m going to Disneyland after this fight and I’m going to take him. It’s going to be his fifth trip to Disneyland.
“There’s things. I wanted to buy shoes, and now I’m able to. I wanted to be able to go to a store and not worry about what I’m spending without checking my bank account, and that’s where we’re at now.”
There’s something uniquely refreshing about Holloway’s approach to being a UFC champion. He’s the anti-McGregor, on some level. Inside the octagon, he’s got the longest active winning streak in the entire UFC, with 11 straight victories.
He’s one of those new-school fighters with no obvious holes in his game.
He strikes smoothly and with a lethal efficiency, but is just as comfortable on the mat as he is standing up, having finished two of his 11 wins by submission.
Against Aldo in June, he started slow and allowed the Brazilian legend to dictate the pace early, but then found his range in the third round and unleashed a relentless barrage of combinations.
Here’s where his personality shines through, though.
Ask Holloway about what he wants to do differently in tonight’s rematch and it becomes obvious why he loves Disneyland so much.
“I forgot that fight, it’s like Finding Nemo; I’m Dory from Finding Nemo,” said Holloway, chuckling at his reference to the Pixar classic.
“I forgot about the last fight already and I’m getting ready for the best version of Jose Aldo.”
Interviewing Holloway is one of the great joys of covering MMA. He laughs, he jokes, he answers questions in the unique accent of a man born and raised in a tough area of Hawaii.
But ask him about his home in Waianae, which is about as far from the tourist beaches most visitors see when they visit Hawaii without leaving the islands, and Holloway gets serious.
He’s been lobbying for the UFC to bring a show to Hawaii for years, and as his stature grows he’s getting ever closer to making it happen.
As much as McGregor’s persona is tied in to being Irish, Holloway wears his Hawaiian pride on his sleeve.
“I go back to my old seventhgrade and eighth-grade classes and my old teachers are still working,” the 25-year-old said. “I go back and say to the kids ‘You don’t believe me? Ask this (teacher), I was a wild child’ and the teacher will say ‘Yeah, he was, but now look at him.’
“If I can do it, why not you? Don’t be the next Max Holloway, be the next you.”
NO PRESSURE
If Henry Cejudo beats Sergio Pettis on tonight, he’s probably in line for another shot at flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson.
Lose, and Cejudo will fall right back into the middle of the pack.
Pressure? Maybe for most guys, but Cejudo just compares where he’s at now to the hours before he won Olympic gold in wrestling at the 2008 Olympics.
This MMA stuff has nothing on the Olympics.
“That stuff right there is scary, you only get one shot,” Cejudo said. “There’s nerves, and then there’s being scared. I was scared for the first time in my damn life.
“I waited five hours (to wrestle for gold) and it was like ‘Oh crap, it’s do or die. There’s no UFC rematch where I’m going to talk smack and get a rematch. No, no, no, that’s a dream you’ve had since you’re a little kid and you have one shot.”
Cejudo was wearing a U.S. Paralympic Team jacket at Thursday’s UFC 218 Media Day, and spoke openly about his desire to see MMA open its doors to Paralympians.
“They all have skills, man,” Cejudo said.
MMA NOTEBOOK
All 26 fighters who are scheduled to compete on tonight’s card were on-weight at Friday morning’s official weigh-ins. Aldo, it should be noted, did not look great … UFC president Dana White claimed Tuesday that Nate Diaz has turned down fights with just about everybody on the company’s roster. On Friday, Diaz responded on Instagram in the most Diaz-way possible. “Shut up b---. Your both thirsty and why is u lying?” Diaz wrote on Instagram. As always with the Diaz brothers, it was pretty much perfect ... The biggest cheer of the evening at Friday’s ceremonial weigh-ins went to Francis Ngannou. We’ve been saying all week that the guy is a star, and if he wins tonight, everyone else is going to be saying it, too ... It’s really too bad Kevin Lee wasn’t on this card. The Detroit native walked through weigh-ins Friday, and the crowd went absolutely nuts.