Kattar ready for ‘massive’ match
Methuen native starring in UFC main event tomorrow vs. Holloway
When Calvin Kattar and his team checked in to the W Abu Dhabi hotel ahead of his big fight on UFC Fight Island, they were welcomed with the works.
Inside his hotel room, two chocolate figurines with the faces of he and his opponent Max Holloway on them were set up on a table, with a chocolate cage behind them. In the bathroom, they were greeted with a message on the mirror: “The Boston Finisher has landed to Fight Island.”
It served as a little bit of a reminder that Saturday’s upcoming bout wasn’t any regular fight. In fact, it’s the biggest one of Kattar’s stillbudding career.
Kattar, a Methuen native, is one of the biggest rising stars in the featherweight division of UFC, and he has a chance to take a huge step in his career with Saturday’s main event clash at 3 p.m. against Holloway (21-6-0), widely regarded as the greatest featherweight of all time. The fight will be broadcast nationally on ABC, a first for this type of bout, and the gravity of the moment isn’t lost on Kattar.
“It’s a great checkpoint for me and my team,” Kattar said. “It’s been a decadeand-a-half of hard work leading me to this moment and I couldn’t be more excited with the opportunity ahead of me and taking on the No. 1 contender and No. 8 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. It’s a huge opportunity and now I just have to go out and handle business.”
If he does, it could mean big things for the 32-year-old Kattar, currently ranked the No. 6 featherweight in the world with a 22-4-0 record. With a win over Holloway, Kattar and his team believe they could earn a featherweight title shot sometime in 2021.
Holloway, the No. 1 contender for the belt, is coming off back-to-back losses to Alexander Volkanovski, the current featherweight champion. The first came in November 2019, when Holloway lost the title, before being defeated in a controversial split decision in the rematch last July. Despite those losses, though, Kattar certainly isn’t taking Holloway lightly. His career speaks for itself.
“He’s definitely the toughest opponent to date, but when you keep winning, they only get tougher,” Kattar said. “This is my nextbiggest fight and a win over him only gets a bigger fight. Whenever you win, the stage never gets smaller, but with a guy like Max, you just have to go out and — really in all big match-ups, in all sports, it’s really just trying to not be the guy who makes the first mistake. …
“For me, all I really have to do, which I’ve always done, is just try to go out there and be the best Calvin Kattar. Not so much focus on my opponent, but perform like I know I can and the rest will take care of itself. … A win over him might put me next in line for contender of the belt, so it’s huge. And not to mention, live on ABC, first time airing on network television and it’s massive. I just want to go out there and deliver to how I’m capable of going out there and competing.”
And as he steps into the octagon on Saturday, Kattar will carry great pride for where he’s from. He was dubbed “The Boston Finisher” early in his career when he competed locally in Salem, N.H., against a New York fighter and the fight’s promoter wanted to build up the rivalry between the two cities. It stuck, and the legend grew when he won at UFC 220 in Boston in 2018.
Kattar said he doesn’t particularly care for nicknames, but he does want his name to be known in the decorated Boston sports landscape. He and his teammate Rob Fant, a Leominster native who’s ranked the No. 5 bantamweight in the UFC, make up the “New England Cartel,” a team coached by Tyson Chartier, and it’s their mission to bring championships to Boston. Saturday provides a big step in that goal.
“There’s nothing better than fighting out of New England,” Kattar said. “We’ve been privy to two decades of championship teams and athletes and … we’re trying to become Boston’s fifth team and just give the New England people something else to get behind. They like winning championships and the only thing we’re missing right now is a championship UFC belt, and we’re working on it. …
“We’re just two hungry kids trying to become some Boston legends and just trying to change our trajectory in a big way. This fight game, starting out, you’re fighting for peanuts and to be at the highest level now after a long period of time earning these shots and these opportunities, it’s why you start in the first place. You hope to have these big moment opportunities and now it’s just about checkpoints. We’re all about checkpoints and we have a big one ahead of us come Saturday night and it’s a good test. But they say if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, so I have that opportunity in front of me.”