Late the fifth and final round of his epic beatdown of Calvin Kattar last weekend, Max Holloway was feeling himself. I mean, really feeling himself.
Holloway was finishing up the most prolific striking performance in the history of mixed martial arts – an absolutely absurd 445 significant strikes landed in 25 minutes – and he had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. The previous year, he had lost a hotly contested split decision to Alexander Volkanovski for the featherweight title, a fight he felt he deserved.
With two straight losses to the new champion, Holloway’s path back to the top was muddied. That was unless Holloway did something really, really special. So one of the greatest fighters to ever live dropped his hands, started talking to the commentary team, and made himself a goddamn legend.
No one’s ever going to doubt Holloway’s claim to be the “best boxer in the UFC” anymore after that. Holloway dodging a a five-punch combo – without even facing his opponent – and landing no-look punches, against one of the best technical boxers in the UFC, will go down as the signature highlight of his storied career. Anderson Silva used to enter Matrix mode from time to time during his prime, but not even he ever did anything like that. It’s been almost a week since it happened and I’m still struggling to come to terms with how insane and awesome it was.
Holloway is a first-ballot Hall of Famer who will go down as one of the best featherweights ever. He held the undisputed UFC title from Dec. 2017 to Dec. 2019, successfully defending the belt three times, a reign that only trails Jose Aldo’s historic inaugural run with the title. He did it by mercilessly breaking his opponents with his unrelenting attack – he’s a pressure striker’s pressure striker, endlessly walking down his foe, never tiring, and battering them until they give in or he runs out of time to punch them even more.
But Saturday’s performance felt like Holloway’s fighting ethos taken to its very extreme. His shouted claim as the “best boxer in the UFC” may be taken as a jab at Kattar, who made himself an in-demand contender with his excellent hands and crisp combinations. For Kattar, Saturday’s fight was supposed to be his big opportunity – a win over Holloway would make him the obvious next contender for the featherweight title. Instead, Holloway slammed the door in his face 445 times.
It was like Holloway’s 2018 demolition of Brian Ortega, only immeasurably more brutal, more impressive, and against a much, much better striker than Ortega. When I looked back at his fight with Ortega last week, I wrote that his fourth round in that bout was one of the best I had ever seen. Holloway might have had two rounds that were as good or better on Saturday, the second and the fourth.
The thing that strikes me the most about Max Holloway is how goddamn mean he is when the fight is on. By all accounts, he’s a lovely fellow outside the Octagon – once the bell rings, he’s an absolute bastard. Holloway discovered a love for elbowing Kattar in the head in the second round, so he just kept doing it, over and over again, all while sneering and doing the robot as Kattar bled all over the cage. Holloway elbowed him again and again in the second – I genuinely don’t know how Kattar survived the five minutes – before cranking him with a head kick at the end of the round.
The second round was an extremely dominant 10-8 round that could have been stopped easily. The fourth round was something entirely different. Max Holloway put poor Calvin Kattar into a torture chamber the likes of which we’ve never seen before in the UFC. The sheer violence was brutal, but there was true artistry in the way he did it. It was profane and beautiful at the same time. Holloway’s combinations, punishing every single part of Kattar’s body at once, using the jab, using the hard right hands, using the elbows, kicking him in the head – Max Holloway was a fucking tsunami in the fourth round. Kattar, a composed and technical striker who always seems cool in a firefight, was reduced to swinging wildly, blindly, as Holloway mashed him again and again. If ever there was a 10-7 round, it was that one.
On Jan. 16, 2021, Jerome Max Keli’i Holloway was the single baddest man in the entire world. How good, in turn, does that make Alexander Volkanovski? Pretty goddamn exceptional – Volkanovski is one of the smartest fighters in the world, better than almost anyone at putting together and executing the perfect gameplan and making crucial adjustments mid-fight. Twice, he’s found a way against Max Holloway. But the fighter who showed up to face Calvin Kattar last weekend is a different animal than anything we’ve ever seen before.
Volkanovski has said that he has little to no interest in a third meeting with Holloway. He’s not going to have a choice anymore. Max Holloway very clearly illustrated on Saturday that there are levels to this shit. You can put someone else in that spot, but there is nobody there who can touch him. And yes, he might officially be 0-2 against Volkanovski, but there is not a single man who deserves to fight for that title more than Max Holloway.
Why? Because he’s the best boxer in the goddamn UFC.
The Big Fight 