Max Holloway Discusses Possible Move to 155, Fight with ‘OG’ Chan Sung Jung

By halting the momentum of an up-and-coming contender, Max
Holloway proved the doubters wrong at UFC
on ESPN 44.

The Hawaiian veteran outstruck Arnold
Allen for five rounds at in their featherweight headliner at
the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City Missouri, on Saturday night to
earn a unanimous decision triumph and reaffirm his position as the
best featherweight in the UFC not named Alexander
Volkanovski. While “Blessed” is 0-3 against the reigning
featherweight champion — including a clear-cut decision loss to
Volkanovski in his last outing at UFC 276 — he also owns recent
wins over featherweight contenders such as Allen, Calvin
Kattar and Yair
Rodriguez.

“You’re only as good as your last fight and I told you guys I had
that [third Alexander
Volkanovski] fight, that was the last taste that they had of
me. I was here with that Kattar fight, I heard the same thing all
over again — that Arnold’s going to be the guy who’s going to break
my chin, who’s going to put [me] out, too slow, too old, whatever
it is,” Holloway said at the post-fight press conference. “We went
out there, we got to prove it. I wanted to go out there and hit and
not get hit … ”

As long as Volkanovski remains featherweight champion, there isn’t
a clear path for Holloway to get to the top of the division. While
“Blessed” has been open to an eventual move to 155 pounds, he
wasn’t making any commitments on Saturday night.

“We’ll see what happens,” Holloway said. “Never say never. We can
talk to the UFC and see if they’d like to do that. They don’t like
people splitting their time too much, but the beautiful thing is
when you get the belt, you can do whatever you want, so that’s the
main goal right now.”

As it currently stands, Volkanovski is scheduled to defend his
featherweight belt against Rodriguez at UFC 290 on July 8. If
Volkanovski wins, a fourth fight against the Aussie might be
unlikely for Holloway, but he isn’t ruling anything out at this
point in time.

“We’ll see what happens,” Holloway said. “Let the best man win. I
get to be a fan in that fight in July, and we’ll see what happens.
Never say never. We’ll be alright.”

However, if another title shot isn’t in the cards in the near
future, Holloway is intrigued by the possibility of facing a fellow
featherweight veteran: Chan Sung
Jung.

“That is the only guy in my time with the older guys that I didn’t
get to fight,” Holloway said. “I would love that fight. There’s a
fight in my agent’s freaking country, Australia — Australia’s
supposed to be happening sometime. We don’t know when. And if
‘Korean Zombie’ wants it, he can get it. I would love to fight him.
That’s one of the guys I’ve been growing up and watching.”

Considering that he has been fighting the top talents at 145 pounds
for approximately a decade, Holloway is surprised that he and “The
Korean Zombie” haven’t already crossed paths.

“I’m kind of tripping out, how didn’t we fight yet? How did we not
fight? If that’s one of the guys, then that’s one of the guys,”
Holloway said. “I’d love to fight and share the Octagon with him.
He’s one of the OGs that I didn’t get to fight yet. We came up in
the same era and we didn’t fight each other, so if that’s it,
that’s it.”