Heading into UFC Singapore this weekend, former featherweight champ Max Holloway recognizes one simple truth about MMA.
“You’re only as good as your last fight in this sport. You’re only as good as your last fight. It’s not like basketball or baseball, where you go, you can have one off game, three days later you’re playing in a game and you can go off,” Holloway (24-7) explained during Wednesday’s media day. “This is like, you have one off fight, you don’t fight for three months, four months if you’re lucky. Sometimes sooner but that’s if you’re really lucky.”
And so Holloway doesn’t seem all that surprised by those counting out his opponent in UFC Singapore’s main event, The Korean Zombie. There has been talk of the fight being Zombie’s swan song— but if things had played out differently, Holloway knows the talk might also be about his own retirement. “At the end of the day I believe if I was coming off my Volk [Alexander Volkanovski] fight, and he is coming off his Volk fight, this would be way different. The talk would be way different. I think the talk would be about, this is a retirement fight for both guys.”
Being able to bounce back in a fight with Arnold Allen following his third loss to Alexander Volkanovski was huge for Holloway. “I was blessed enough to have the Arnold Allen fight. I was in Korean Zombie’s shoes with the Arnold Allen fight. Everybody was counting me out. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people in here were counting me out. I pay no mind.”
As for Zombie, properly Chan Sung Jung, “I think it’s like one year and four months Korean Zombie’s been out. So I’m expecting the best Korean Zombie there is. He had one year, four months to get better as an athlete, to get better as a person period.”
Asked whether a fight with Ilia Topuria might make sense with a win this Saturday, Holloway was taking a wait-and-see approach.
“At the end of the day, if you look at the rank, I’m the number one contender, and I’ve been busy. I’ve been busy.” Guys further down the ranks, noted Holloway, have been less active, leading him to question how they’re holding their rankings. “I think people love the UFC because the UFC puts the best fighter against the best fighters in the world. I’m over here fighting contenders, fighting who’s who, whoever I’ve got to beat, whoever is up next. I know there’s talk about the man you just said. We’ll see what happens. [Topuria] just barely beat a guy who just lost to the champ. I don’t know how that would shake out too much.”
There’s been talk of Aljamain Sterling, the now-former UFC bantamweight champion, also making the move to 145lbs. Holloway isn’t sure how that would play out.
“I don’t know. I don’t know, man. I couldn’t tell you. It’s tough, that last fight he went out there, he got caught. You could blame a bunch of stuff, you can blame stuff going on or whatever, but he didn’t. Kudos to him. Shout out to [Sean] O’Malley, he went out there and proved a lot of people wrong. The Suga Show goes on.”
Max Holloway, however, isn’t worried about names like Topuria and Sterling right now. “I’m just here to fight, and right now Korean Zombie’s got my full attention.”
Watch the full UFC Singapore media day appearance by Max Holloway above.
