Kevin Holland is one of the most talked about fighters to have never beaten a Top 15 opponent in the UFC.
That would be understandable if Holland were an emerging young prospect or a fresh-faced newcomer that recently kicked in the door in his promotional debut, but he is neither of those things. Instead, he’s someone that has made 16 previous trips into the Octagon across two divisions, having amassed a 10-5 record with one No Contest, and one-sided defeats to the most dangerous and capable fighters he’s faced thus far.
Saturday night, the 30-year-old “Trail Blazer” gets another opportunity to change that when he takes on Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson in the main event of this weekend’s fight card at Amway Center in Orlando.
It’s a matchup that could either finally allow Holland to clear that particular hurdle, but might also slam the door closed on his aspirations of being a Top 15 fighter himself one day, and seeing how it plays out will be an utterly fascinating way to close out a quality night of action inside the Octagon this weekend.
AN OVERBLOWN BREAKOUT
Holland was the breakout star of the post-pandemic-pause UFC in 2020, fighting five times in eight months, collecting five victories, four stoppages, three post-fight bonuses, and colossal amount of attention and praise for a run of success that didn’t stand up to scrutiny well at the time and holds up even less now.
He entered the year off a submission loss to Brendan Allen the previous fall in Boston, coming out of the gates quickly with a 39-second finish of Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez. Just shy of three months later, he stopped short-notice newcomer Joaquin Buckley. That was followed five weeks later by a split decision win over Darren Stewart in the middle of September before Holland picked up his fourth win of the year on Halloween, defeating debuting short-notice newcomer Charlie Ontiveros in just two-and-a-half minutes.
The year culminated with a first-round knockout win over former title contender Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza where Holland stunned the Brazilian veteran with punches from his back with Souza in his guard.
First and foremost, winning five straight fights in the UFC is a difficult task to accomplish, regardless of opposition, and doing it in eight months is wild. Holland gets props for being as active as he was and handling his business.
That being said, not all wins are created equal, and folks went a little overboard projecting Holland’s future based on those five victories.
Two of those wins came against short-notice newcomers, with his win over Buckley getting a significant boost in perceived value after Buckley delivered his Street Fighter-esque finish of Impa Kasanganay in his next fight. The wins on either side of his victory over Buckley came against competitors that were .500 in the UFC at the time — Hernandez was 1-1, Stewart was 5-5 with one No Contest — and while the former has gone on to have solid success, the latter failed to earn a victory in each of his next three outings, was released, and then lost his first fight back on the regional circuit as well.
And the win over Souza should have been treated more like Beneil Dariush’s win over Tony Ferguson at UFC 262 — solid, but the third in a run of defeats that would continue on, signaling that the former contender was clearly at the end of his career.
Instead, folks acted like Holland knocked out “Prime Jacare” because it made his run seem more impressive, and allowed for them to do two things: one, take shots at UFC President Dana White for not signing Holland following his unanimous decision win on a previous season of his Contender Series, and two, hold him up as the hot new contender in a routinely bland middleweight division.
The problem is that Holland wasn’t a hot new contender, and wasn’t ready to compete against the best the division had to offer, and it showed when he got thoroughly out-wrestled by Derek Brunson in a fight where he was far more interested in talking to White and KhabibNurmagomedov outside the cage than getting himself out from underneath Brunson.
Three weeks later, he stepped in short notice against Marvin Vettori and suffered the same fate, albeit with less in-fight discussions with those seated next to the Octagon.
A No Contest result in a fight with Kyle Daukaus in October wrapped up a 2021 campaign without a victory, and just like that, Holland’s momentum had vanished.
FALLING FOR IT AGAIN
Following the loss to Daukaus, Holland announced plans to move to welterweight, and in his first two appearances in the UFC’s 170-pound weight class, the Texas-based fighter produced second-round stoppage wins over veterans Alex Oliveira and Tim Means.
Once again, the buzz about Holland being a fresh name to potentially climb the ranks started to build. His poor run in 2021 was framed as losing to superior talents and fighting in the wrong weight class, and the idea of scrutinizing those 2020 results — or even the weight of wins over Oliveira and Means in 2022 — was just brushed aside as things no one needed to consider.
Holland is a personality, and elevating a personality seems of tantamount importance to some fans and media than giving time to competitors that say less, but garner more meaningful victories.
The proof of that came in the wake of UFC 279, where Holland shifted from facing veteran Daniel Rodriguez in what would have been a competitive and instructive matchup to taking on Khamzat Chimaev when the unbeaten prospect missed weight for his clash with Nathan Diaz and the deck was re-shuffled.
The fact that Holland was quickly dispatched didn’t matter — he stepped up and accepted the challenge for facing the undefeated juggernaut, earning plaudits for his willingness to get trucked, and comes out of it with a chance to face a Top 15 opponent on the other side.
Once again, it feels like people are over-valuing strong results over good competition and skimming over the parts that don’t fit the narrative that is continually being crafted around Holland, even though he’s yet to actually prove himself capable of beating a top competitor in the UFC.
BEST CHANCE, LAST CHANCE?
That brings us to Saturday’s clash with Thompson, which is both Holland’s best chance to register a win over a Top 15 opponent to date and therefore might also be the last time anyone suggests he might be able to accomplish the feat if he comes up short.
Thompson is at a bit of a crossroads in his career, entering on a two-fight slide after being wrestled to decisions by Gilbert Burns and Belal Muhammad, but still two years removed from scoring a clear victory over highly regarded emerging contender Geoff Neal. The two-time title challenger turns 40 early next year, and is just 3-5-1 since earning the first of his welterweight title shots, yet he remains entrenched in the Top 10.
Should Holland win, some will invariably argue that he’s earned that important win over a fading fighter, which might well be the case, while others are sure to look at it the same way they did his triumph over Souza two years ago.
What makes this more complicated is that there is no genuine way to forecast how this fight plays out because with Holland, it seems like all options are constantly on the table.
Could he march out and dominate Thompson, making positive use of his size and reach advantages to land at range while keeping the karate stylist at a distance, unable to respond? Sure.
Could he just as easily be too willing to play the point-fighting game and turn that into a losing battle where he gives away round? Indeed.
Could he look to wrestle, eager to replicate the efforts turned in by Burns and Muhammad? Perhaps.
Could he walk onto something nasty, like a spinning attack he should have seen coming, because he was too loose and playful with the wrong guy? Absolutely.
This is the problem with Holland — there is no way to know what is going to happen because for every strong outing he puts forth, there is a corresponding “well that was awful” effort to pair with it, and the bad ones tend to come in these kinds of spots.
And the truly maddening thing is that he has all the markings of a fighter that could legitimately be a contender.
His measurables are excellent for the 170-pound weight class, and he clearly has both power and a keen instinct when it comes to finishing fights, but it seems like he either doesn’t care to take things (or himself) seriously enough to take that next step or is comfortable with his position in the division, and therefore doesn’t have the urgency or drive to do what is required to clear this hurdle.
I talk all the time in my writing and video work about the fact that being the 10th or 18th or 25th best fighter in a given division is still a noteworthy accomplishment, and I stand by it, but it can also feel like a bit of a waste when it seems like someone with the talent to climb higher is content to settle for being less than the absolute best version of themselves.
And thus far, that’s what Holland has felt like: a genuine talent more worried about being a personality than potentially being a full-fledged contender, and it will be curious to see if whether that changes or continues on this weekend.
