At UFC 272 on Saturday night, Kevin Holland made his welterweight return after more than four years competing at middleweight. “Trailblazer” (a.k.a “Big Mouth”) made a strong first impression as a 170-pound competitor in the UFC by stopping veteran Alex Oliveira via TKO in the second round.
During his recent appearance on The MMA Hour, Holland expressed a bit of dissatisfaction in his performance, giving it a mere “C+”. But as far as his future plans go, he wants to keep himself active in 2022.
“Shoot, if they’ve got something available next month at 185 pounds — because I don’t feel like going on a diet right this second — then I’ll do that, too,” Holland told Ariel Helwani.
“It would mess things up if I was shooting for something specifically. I’m just shooting to be an active guy. I’m just shooting to continue to grow and get experience and be a better fighter.
“So if I can fight five, six times this year, that’d be awesome. I like to fight a lot, so I can’t do every fight at 170 pounds if I’m gonna fight six times this year. There’s still some good fights at ‘85, so I’ll take whatever comes.
“I think an ‘85 fight sounds good right now if I want to go out and eat carne asada for the next few weeks.”
Holland has grand plans for himself in 2022, something that isn’t always seen in today’s MMA landscape.
“Realistically we could do two to three this year at 170 pounds. We already got one done so we could do two more if we need to, and then we could do two at ‘85 or three at ‘85, however they want to do it. We could do three and three if they want to.”
Since entering the UFC via Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018, the 29-year-old Holland (22-7, 1 NC) has so far fought a total of 14 times already. 2020 was his most active year wherein he fought a total of five times and won all of them.
Some of those notable victories include a third-round TKO over Joaquin Buckley and a first-round KO over the legendary Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza.
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