On a night filled with standout performance by young, up-and-coming fighters, 23-year-old Hawaiian Max Holloway shined as bright as anyone on Saturday night’s UFC on FOX 15 card a Newark’s Prudential Center.
The featherweight scored the biggest victory of his career on his biggest stage, as he showed off a wide array of skills with his third-round submission victory over Cub Swanson, one he believes deserves a post-fight bonus.
“I don’t think that’s an A-plus performance,” Holloway said. “I think that’s a 50K performance.”
While not a lot of note happened in the first round, as both felt each other out with their kickboxing, Holloway (13-2) turned up the heat in the second, landing a varied mix of strikes which kept Swanson off-balance.
By the third, it turned into a question of whether Swanson (21-7) would survive the round. The Jackson’s MMA fighter managed to survive a tight arm triangle, but a guillotine later in the round proved to be too much. Swanson tapped at the 3:58 mark for his second straight submission loss.
“Its feels great, it just feels great,” said Holloway, who has won six in a row since a 2013 loss to Conor McGregor. “I’m pretty much living in the gym and I’m just glad to see the hard work pay off.”