Max
Holloway is considering a move up to lightweight for good after
his loss to Ilia
Topuria at UFC
308.
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Holloway suffered the first knockout loss of his career in a failed
featherweight title bid against Topuria in the main event at UFC
308 on Saturday at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. “Blessed”
appeared to be getting ahead on the scorecards when Topuria caught
him against the cage in signature fashion to land the devastating
knockout blow in the third stanza.
This was Holloway’s third failed bid to reclaim the strap after
losing it to Alexander
Volkanovski in 2019. Outside of Volkanovski and Topuria,
Holloway has wiped out almost the entire old guard of the
featherweight division. With an 0-3 head-to-head record against
Volkanovski and the failed bid against Topuria, Holloway feels
there is little left for him to do at 145 pounds.
Meanwhile, Holloway earned his latest shot with an iconic BMF title
win against Justin
Gaethje in a lightweight clash at UFC
300 this past April. While the Hawaiian is not rushing into
decisions just yet, he believes lightweight is the way to go moving
forward. Although Holloway has the chance of fighting exciting
young featherweights like Diego Lopes
or Movsar
Evloev, the caliber of names at 155 pounds seems more appealing
to the former featherweight champ.
“We’re all gonna sit down with the team, relax. There’s nothing
needed to be rushing back right now,” Holloway said at the
post-fight press conference. “Probably I’ll come back summer, big
July card, right, in Vegas – do something. We’ll see what happens,
I mean [155 pounds] looks really good right now… I’m gonna sit down
with my team, we’ll see… I had the best [145-pound] cut here, but I
mean, what else is there to do? I had a couple of times to reclaim
it. New guys coming up, yeah that would be fun. But ’55 looks more
fun as fighting just more [for] the caliber and everyone there and
the names there look really exciting to put my name in the mix.”