Max Holloway Ready For UFC 231, Wants To Move Up P4P Rankings
Max Holloway is not worried about getting pulled from his UFC 231 title fight in Toronto. The featherweight champion is letting fans know that all is well and he will be ready to face Brian Ortega to close out what has been a difficult year for the 26-year-old Hawaiian champion. Holloway has called his title reign; “the blessed” era but 2018 made it hard to back up that namesake.
Holloway says all is well for 231 according to a recent interview with ESPN. “Things have been unfortunate this year, but I’m in a good place right now,” Holloway said of his health scares when he tried to fight in 2018. Most notably was when he was pulled from his fight in July for UFC 226 because he displayed what looked like symptoms of a concussion. Before that, Holloway was willing to step in to face Khabib Nurmagomedov for the lightweight title at UFC 223 but trying to make weight with only six days’ notice proved difficult and too risky to let happen.
Holloway told ESPN that the investigation into his symptoms is still an “ongoing investigation” so he did not want to comment on it too much but did talk about what he and his team think went wrong in July. “That fight week in July, something went wrong after my first meal about eight days out. We gave it a couple days, but it just got worse,” said Holloway. He also said the UFC’s medical “scans showed it wasn’t a concussion.”
While the current featherweight champ is ready to defend his title against Ortega on December 8, a move to lightweight for Holloway is something he thinks will put him in the “pound-for-pound” conversation.
“I want to move up the rankings to be the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world. That’s what I want to be.” –Max Holloway
Holloway says the cut to 145 is difficult but he has made it enough to not only win and defend that title, but he did it against one of the greatest featherweights to hold it in Jose Aldo.
