For the fans that stayed up until midnight on the east coast to watch them some fights, the Derek Brunson vs. Kevin Holland fight was one for the books. The ‘Book of WTF’ anyway. Holland talked and joked his way to a one sided unanimous decision win for Derek Brunson in a performance so bad UFC president Dana White described it as a mental breakdown. Not a great result for your first main event.
Everyone is putting the loss down to Holland’s antics, but perhaps Derek Brunson was just too big and strong for him. Holland stepped onto the scales for this fight at 183 pounds, and looked pretty small under the hulking Brunson, which is where “Big Mouth” was stuck for the majority of their fight.
During a post-fight interview with Megan Olivi on ESPN, Holland said he’d be getting a nutritionist and looking into taking a fight at 170. He also mentioned he’d been worried about cardio during his first five round fight.
“I think more than likely I just overthought it the whole week about the fight being 25 minutes,” Holland said. “Wrestling the whole time and getting ready for the fight was rough. Sparring 25 minutes for this fight was rough. So I think I was just overthinking it.”
“Then I get in there and I was like in the last two rounds, ‘Oh crap this isn’t that bad.’ You know what I mean? So I probably should have pushed it from the beginning. But props to Brunson. He did a really good job.”
As for the goofing around, he released an Instagram video shortly after the conclusion of the fight saying “Never gonna stop talking, if you guys don’t f**king like it, deuces.”
“I’m gonna be me til I die,” he wrote in the caption of the video. “Never said I wanted to be the champ I said I wanted to have a good time and that I did on to the next,” he wrote on Instagram. “Thank you Mick Maynard, UFC, Dana White for the opportunity. Back to the drawing board and see you soon Khabib Nurmagomedov. One little piece of advice and I take down a guy who’s never been took down in octagon. True wrestling genius you are!”