Max Holloway: ‘Hard to be crazy’ about Alexander Volkanovsky’s loss when ’80-90% of the world thought I won the fight’



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Max Holloway isn’t drowning in the past despite losing a controversial decision to current UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski in his last appearance in the Octagon.

As he prepares to return for a main clash against Calvin Kattar at UFC Fight Island 7, which airs on ABC, the 145-pound former King understands the frustration in coming out on the wrong side of what he thinks. be bad dashboards.

That said, Holloway admits that the sting of a loss is a bit easier to accept after hearing from a number of UFC fighters, who still rank him as the best featherweight in the sport while giving him a sign of head over to Volkanovsky in their most recent. meeting.

“That means a lot,” Holloway said in his interview with MMA Fighting Wednesday on UFC Fight Island 7 media day. “That’s why the last fight is so hard to do. It’s hard to be mad at the last fight because exactly what you said, 80-90% of the world thought I won the fight.

“It’s not just the fans. They are competitors. It’s guys like Nate [Diaz], Dustin [Poirier], Justin [Gaethje], Jorge [Masvidal], people like the coaches, the GSP coach [Firas Zahabi], “Big” John McCarthy, the guy who made the rules. I’m not too angry about it.

Following the move, Holloway has been one of the strongest open scoring advocates in mixed martial arts after being fortunate enough to see the system work on his own as he sat on the cage side for a recent Invicta FC card in Kansas.

The All-Women Fight Promotion tested open scoring with the Kansas Athletic Commission where fighters, the broadcast team and the public learn how the judges score a fight after each round.

In addition to open scoring, UFC Hall of Fame member Michael Bisping also recently raised questions about liability for judging where officials can regularly produce bad scorecards, but it appears he there is little or no impact.

For her part, Holloway doesn’t claim to know all the answers, but the 29-year-old Hawaiian can’t help but hope something changes in the future.

“I know what I think about open scoring and I heard how the boss [Dana White] feels about the open scoring, ”Holloway said. “At the end of the day that’s how they feel but it’s not going to shake my position on it. We ended up going to Kansas and watching the Invicta fights and watching how it was going and a lot of questions were answered. The way I thought it would negatively affect the fight, it really wasn’t. It was cool. We’ll see what happens.

“Again, as I’m talking about, ‘Big’ John McCarthy is actually running courses for judges and things. I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, but I hope sooner or later they find out and we find out.

Perhaps the biggest downside to this controversial move is that Holloway has now given up two fights against Volkanovsky in total, meaning he may have to work a lot harder to come back for a third chance.

However, none of this seems to distract Holloway from the task at hand, as he keeps the same demeanor as he prepares for Kattar in his first untitled fight since 2016.

“I told you long before when I had the belt – the belt was just something to show the world that I was the champion,” Holloway explained. “I’ll wear myself like a champion’s belt or no belt. We are going to go there and fight. I love to fight. I love to fight.

“People say it’s hard to get up. I’m still fighting five, five [minute] Sleeves. More championship heats. We are on ABC. I know a lot of a la carte fighters who would kill for being in that position, so at the end of the day it’s still the same. A fight is a fight for me.

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