Esther Lin, MMA Fighting
UFC would love to add Holloway vs. Volkanovski to UFC 243 and ‘Blessed’ sounds interested … if his doctors okay it.
Max Holloway put on another great performance at UFC 240, taking out challenger Frankie Edgar in a decision (watch highlights here) that saw two judges hand him all five rounds on the scorecards (let’s just ignore that third 48-47 score for the moment). And while Edgar had his moments, he never seemed to hurt Holloway … which has left the door open to the possibility of a relatively quick turnaround.
With No. 1-ranked contender Alexander Volkanovski hailing from Australia, the obvious choice in a perfect situation would be to add Holloway vs. Volkanovski to the Whittaker vs. Adesanya card in Melbourne at UFC 243 on Oct. 6, 2019. During the post fight press conference (watch it), Holloway sounded open to the idea, but refused to commit until he got the green light from his team and doctors.
”We see what happens,” Holloway said with his son sitting on his lap. “I look fine, I look great. But I wait for my team, I wait for my coaches. I need to get medically tested. I fought three title fights in 7.5 months. And I want to fight one more time this year, but we gotta get all the right testing and go from there.”
”I know how bad I want to fight at home and I don’t want to take that away from [Volkanovski],” he said later. “But, at the end of the day I just gotta go see the doctors and get checked out and we’ll go from there. At the end of the day a stadium show is cool, and I definitely want to fight by the end of the year for sure. UFC has this habit of putting me the first week of December. Hopefully, if I get medically cleared and everything and I’m good to go by December, I can get that first week cuz it’s been Max week for the last two years, I think. So don’t be changing up on me now because you only get one card. Keep that same energy, UFC.”
So it sounds like Holloway would prefer an extra two months, but he didn’t shut the door completely on other events near the end of the year.
”New York sounds cool,” Holloway said. “Volkanovski in Australia sounds cool. So we’ll see. I gotta get checked by the doctors and we’ll go from there.”
That was something “Blessed” repeated over and over. Gotta get checked by the doctors. When asked if that was a new protocol following his mysterious health issues in 2018, Holloway confirmed it.
”I’ve got this little mini me right here,” he said. “I’m trying to be able to walk and talk and be fine. We had some tragedies that happened not in our sport, but in combat sports this past week that’s pretty sad. And we want to stay on top of it. And my manager, my team, they all push me to go to the doctors whenever something, I could be telling them my hand is sore, I get a text from my manager 10 minutes later, ‘Check your Google calendar, you gotta go to the doctor right now.’ I’m like what? What is going on! But these guys look out for the best for me and that’s why I love them.”
”I’m trying to stay around for a long time. Not a good time. A long time.”