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A year after former Featherweight champion, Max Holloway, was forced to withdraw from his scheduled title defense against Brian Ortega at UFC 226 due to “concussion-like symptoms,” the ex-champ seems to have found the root of the problem.
Speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “Blessed” talked as much as he could about the details surrounding his sluggishness during fight week, which was brought to everyone’s attention on live TV by former Middleweight champion, Michael Bisping.
“That July fight, when we was getting ready, it was in Vegas. I had to fly to New York to do my media day. So from Hawaii to New York. We did 12 hours of media and then we went to Vegas, I think got to Vegas on Thursday. I just felt out of it,” Holloway said via MMA Fighting.
“Not really cutting weight, we was dieting and stuff. Even the water thing, I drink diluted water fight week. Even before the fight, we drink diluted water. A couple days past and it wasn’t going away.”
After the fight, Max had to undergo several medical tests and lab work to figure out what exactly went wrong. Finally, Holloway and his team got the word, though he isn’t able to reveal exact details since he is pursuing legal action.
“I could tell exactly what it was. It was something we consumed,” Holloway said. “Like right now not that much people know, I left my old management. I’m with new management now and my manager now he’s like a behavioral science guy and he’s probably watching this stream squirming the way I’m talking about it but we got stuff going on,” he added.
“I’m looking to work on with lawyers and we plan on suing somebody. There’s a bunch of stuff that I really can’t talk about. That’s why he’s squirming back there. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it too much but that’s what it is. It was something I consumed. I don’t even know if I can tell you [what it was].”
Since then, Max went on to defeat Ortega at UFC 231, before coming up short in his bid to win the interim Lightweight title against Dustin Poirier at UFC 236. After defeating Frankie Edgar three months later, “Blessed” was most recently losing his 145-pound title to Alex Volkanovski at last Saturday’s (Dec. 14, 2019) UFC 245 event.
As for what’s next for Max, that’s unclear at the moment, but it seems he has a whole different type of fight on his hands in the foreseeable future.