Despite winning nine fights in a row to put himself in position to win the interim featherweight championship at UFC 206, Max Holloway is still flying under the radar.
Holloway is by a long stretch the lesser known of the two fighters vying for the 145-pound belt this Saturday, December 10. Anthony Pettis, his opponent, is the former lightweight champion and at one point looked like he might be the next big thing in the sport.
Even without comparing him to Pettis, who received a great deal of media attention as a result of the "Showtime Kick" and during his run as champion, Holloway has managed to escape notice.
This has less to do with Holloway's generally quiet personality than it does with the dispersed nature of the UFC's product over the last several years.
Holloway is the poster child for just how hard it can be for the average fan to track an important new fighter from event to event. In fact, he's one of the first elite new talents to come of age entirely in this dispersed environment, with fights split between pay-per-view, Fox, Fox Sports 1 and Fight Pass, not to mention its various defunct platforms like Fuel and FX.
Of Holloway's 15 appearances in the UFC, only four have taken place on the main card of a pay-per-view. On one other occasion, he appeared on the main card of a UFC on Fox event. In those 15 fights, Holloway fought on prelims televised on FX (twice), a main card on FX, the Facebook/YouTube preliminary broadcast back when that was a thing, Fox Sports 1 (four times) and Fight Pass (twice).
Following his fight with Conor McGregor, the last loss of his career, six of Holloway's next seven fights—precisely the period in which he improved enough to become a contender—were buried on smaller platforms, and the lone pay-per-view appearance was UFC 172, which drew only a middling buyrate, per Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t MMA Payout).
Don't have Fight Pass? Then you missed his demolitions of Will Chope and Akira Corassani. If you weren't one of the 913,000 people who watched the Fight Night headlined by Benson Henderson vs. Brandon Thatch on Fox Sports 1 or one of the 860,000 who saw the Henderson vs. Rafael Dos Anjos card, you didn't catch Holloway's wins over Cole Miller and Clay Collard. Only 796,000 watched his sole headlining effort on FS1.
If you watched everything religiously, or happened to tune in for his fight with Cub Swanson on Fox (2.745 million viewers), then you would have gotten a sense for what a special fighter Holloway was in the process of becoming.
If you were a more casual fan, though, his transformation into a top contender wasn't exactly drawing headlines. Holloway quietly went about his business, dispatching opponent after opponent, usually in entertaining fashion, while making small improvements in every outing. In the aggregate, those improvements turned him into one of the best featherweights on the planet.
Holloway debuted in the UFC in February 2012 as a raw 20-year-old. He was talented, to be sure, and had started to generate some hype as a prospect, but he had only four professional fights under his belt. He was a massive underdog to Dustin Poirier in that debut, and while he put up a good fight, he fell by submission in the first round.
Slowly but surely, Holloway added to his game. His takedown defense improved drastically as he shellacked Pat Schilling, and he pulverized Justin Lawrence's body. He had a tough, close fight with the veteran Leonard Garcia but came out on top.
The going got tough after that. Holloway lost a close split decision to Dennis Bermudez at UFC 160, a fight that every media member scoring the fight thought he'd won. McGregor handed him a second consecutive loss in his next appearance, dropping his UFC record down to 3-3.
That's when Holloway's streak began. He demolished Chope, submitted Andre Fili and then finished Collard and Corassani to close out a resurgent 2014. In four fights in 2015, Holloway won a decision from Miller, brutalized Swanson, beat Charles Oliveira in a weird fight and then took a three-rounder over Jeremy Stephens at the epic UFC 194. His one 2016 appearance was a rollicking win over Ricardo Lamas at UFC 199.
While the dispersed media environment and the profusion of platforms and events has made it hard for Holloway to build name recognition among more casual MMA fans, it has also provided the perfect context for him to develop as a fighter.
The UFC ran 45 events in 2014 and 41 in 2015. This created a tremendous number of opportunities for fighters, like Donald Cerrone, who were willing and able to fight regularly. Like Cerrone, Holloway was always willing to step up on short notice, even against less-than-elite opponents, and by doing so gained a huge amount of in-cage experience.
This led directly to Holloway's development as a fighter. All the time he spent in the gym preparing for those eight fights in 2014 and 2015 turned him from a talented prospect into a reliable and technical action fighter and then transformed him from an action fighter into a legitimate contender with elite skills.
There are upsides and downsides, then, to the dispersion of UFC events across different platforms. It has created opportunities for young fighters like Holloway to develop, and develop quickly, if they're healthy and don't have trouble making the weight. On the other hand, it has become difficult for casual fans to follow the rise of these young fighters.
Let's think about a couple of other examples of fighters who have come up at the same time as Holloway.
Robert Whittaker won The Ultimate Fighter: Nations in 2012 and now finds himself on the cusp of contending at 185 pounds. After a pair of rough losses to Court McGee and Stephen Thompson, Whittaker went on a crushing six-fight run that culminated in a knockout of Derek Brunson in November.
Three of those fights, including a pair of highlight-reel knockouts, took place on Fight Pass. His headlining bout against Brunson was Thanksgiving weekend and drew only 686,000 viewers. He appeared twice on pay-per-view, including one slot on the UFC 193 card that featured Ronda Rousey vs. Holly Holm, but for the most part his rise to title contention took place out of the public eye.
Or consider TJ Dillashaw. Prior to his epic upset of Renan Barao at UFC 173 to win the bantamweight title, Dillashaw had fought once on Spike, twice on Fuel TV, once on the Facebook/YouTube prelims of a pay-per-view, once on the FX prelims of a Fox card and then twice on Fox Sports 1. He had never appeared on Fox or a pay-per-view main card.
There have been some exceptions to these out-of-the-way bookings—Cody Garbrandt, Paige VanZant, Khabib Nurmagomedov—but most up-and-coming fighters have been hampered by the difficulty of building momentum in the public eye.
Holloway is the poster child for both the problems and benefits of navigating this dispersed environment.
