Kevin Holland finally had an opportunity to get revenge on “crazy” Nick Diaz, who went for the sauced-up Stockton slap after crossing paths with the welterweight “Trailblazer” inside the promotion’s APEX facility way back in 2018.
Unfortunately, the promotion wanted Holland to hold out for the UFC Abu Dhabi card in August.
“I was supposed to take a fight at 170 against a pretty big-name opponent, but they said he wasn’t going to be able to fight until August,” Holland said at the UFC 302 media day. “I said, ‘Damn, that’s a long time.’ And they’re like, ‘Bro, it’s only an extra month.’ And I was like, ‘Nah, that’s too long.’ It was Diaz.”
“I knew he was going to come back to fight, so I just thought I was going to smoke him, and then I was going to smoke Luque, too,” Holland continued. “Those two are fighting each other, so they can smoke each other. Two big ass joints. It was in Abu Dhabi. I wasn’t going to Abu Dhabi.”
Diaz will instead fight welterweight veteran Vicente Luque.
That freed up Holland to accept a middleweight showdown opposite Michal Oleksiejczuk as part of the upcoming UFC 302 pay-per-view (PPV) main card, which pops off this Sat. night (June 1, 2024) at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
For the rest of the UFC 302 fight card and PPV lineup click here.