How committed is Max Holloway to a featherweight future?
For all the well-deserved superlatives you can toss Holloway’s way, the featherweight champion seems to have a wandering eye for new goals outside his weight class.
Holloway (21-4 MMA, 17-4 UFC) is plainly obsessed with making an impact at 155, as was demonstrated by accepting a bout with Khabib Nurmagomedov on six days’ notice for UFC 223 (from which he ultimately had to withdraw), and then taking on Dustin Poirier for an interim lightweight belt, where he put in a valiant effort before coming up short.
At a media day in Los Angeles last week, Holloway expressed interest in fighting Conor McGregor, and talked about going up as high as middleweight and winning a title when he gets older.
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We’ve been covering this game long enough to know talk like this comes when a fighter is starting to get bored when’s he close to cleaning out his division, and we’ve seen an alarmingly high percentage of champions falter in that situation. Maybe we’re trying to make something out of nothing here, but given what Volkanovski (20-1 MMA, 7-0 UFC) is capable of doing in the cage, perhaps Holloway’s talk about other weight classes doesn’t seem the wisest choice.
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