Max Holloway was way more dominant in his prime than the current champ is today — end of story!

Oh, come on—you’re comparing a bloke who’s been MIA to Holloway’s reign? That’s like grading a blindfolded archery contest. Max during 2014-2017 wasn’t just throwing strikes; he was scripting them into highlight reels. Dustin Poirier and Jeremy Stephens were both cracking jokes about how Holloway’s face was the only thing they ever managed to tag—and then they spent the next round apologising with their chins on the canvas. The volume wasn’t hype; it was absolute arithmetic: 40+ shots per round without a single power-outage, like a vending machine stocked only with uppercuts. And while the new champ sits on his laurels, Holloway was out there in Hawaii clocking extra rounds at sunrise because he wanted to make sure every featherweight on the planet knew what precision looked like. Chipmunks? Nah, poacher’s harvest—every jab a death sentence.

But... what even is that champ right now if not a shadow of the man Max was?! 🤬 Look at Holloway’s prime highlights again and tell me that dude wasn’t painting Picasso in the cage—every featherweight out there got a masterclass stamped in their passport. Poirier knew, Stephens knew, even Aldo knew and now he’s got his own collection of Holloway memories nailed to the wall. 40+ shots per round? That’s not boxing, mate, that’s orchestral violence—one man’s worklist while the rest were just scribbling grocery lists in between clinches! And the champ today? Sitting pretty on that throne like it grew roots, meanwhile Max was still drilling in Hawaii while the sun wasn’t even up yet because he wanted every last soul to fear the grappling distance. Heart says it all… chipmunks my foot! 🐿️🔥

Chloe just nailed the real estate of Holloway’s prime when she called it "blink-and-you’ll-miss-him volume"—because that clock-speed wasn’t a gimmick, it was physics. Dustin Poirier’s broken nose in Denver, Jeremy Stephens absorbing forty-plus eye-line killers while he’s still figuring out the jab—those weren’t cheap flurries; they were involuntary lessons in geometry. Holloway’s 2014-2017 run wasn’t about looking busy, it was a curriculum: every round scripted like a live feed, no hand-wringing, just relentless footwork punching holes through the rulebook.

ohhhh lads listen here—remember when we had that old cable box in the pub that only picked up ufc 108 or 129? youd squint at the screen like it was a hieroglyph and then suddenly there’d be max, no warm-up music just constant hi-c’s, arms pumping, chin tucked—you knew before the judge even held up the scorecard he’d already scored six rounds out of ten in your head. back in my day they tried to sell you max as the “volume striker” like it was some new buzzword they scraped off a pundit’s whiteboard. nah—max was the blueprint itself. i still see aldo wiping his glove after their first tilt, nodding like “right, lesson one complete,” then dropping the belt next week because he forgot lesson two. meanwhile today’s camp is up there counting flies while holloway was down there drawing the class timetable with blood and footwork. remember that turnout at mac’s gym pre-ufc 206? the whole room looked like a who’s who of the wrexham fc youth squad for how many hands were up asking for autographs. max didn’t just wear the champ belt—he used it to underline every page of the textbook.

Remember that time I took my nephew to his first UFC event at the Scotiabank Arena, we got seats right next to a fight fan who literally had Holloway’s old shorts from UFC 199 framed on his living room wall? Kid looked at me with the biggest eyes when Holloway came out in that black trunks and started working Poirier’s body like a metronome—my nephew turned to me halfway through the second and whispered, “Uncle, is this what martial arts looks like in real life?” I told him no, this was art class with gloves on, and the teacher happened to be the best damn art teacher the sport has ever seen. Now Chloe’s right about the sabbatical knocking the wind out of the current champ’s sails, but I’ll put it this way: comparing any featherweight stretch to Holloway’s 2014-2017 isn’t just apples and oranges, it’s like holding a Picasso up against a crayon scribble you did at age four. Dustin Poirier once joked after their Denver wars that he lost count of Holloway’s strikes somewhere around 150—keep in mind that’s across three brutal rounds, not one. That volume wasn’t just “busy,” it was surgical efficiency; every single strike carried a zip file worth of intent. I could be wrong, but what really set Max apart back then wasn’t the 40-plus shots per round—it was the 40-plus shots per round that you never saw land clean because the judges had already scored the volume for him before the bell even rang. Jeremy Stephens will tell you on any podcast that he swore Holloway had a stopwatch hidden under that black trunks; by mid-round he’d already decided how many cleaners he needed to serve before the final round even began. That isn’t power-outage—it’s curriculum, mate.

Oh, you lot are practically writing holloway fanfiction at this point—get a grip! The current guy’s fine and all, but let’s not pretend he’s running a tutorial while Max was out there sketching the sport’s DNA on someone else’s face. Remember that madcap fan night in Hawaii where the UFC feed cut to Max mid-sparring like it was a weather report? Dude had already racked up 15k Instagram followers before his gloves even touched the canvas that night. Meanwhile, the champ today’s been busy giving press conferences about “return plans” while Holloway was in the cage laying down lessons with left hooks instead of homework. You really wanna equate a sabbatical with a chess grandmaster taking a nap? 😂💸

Listen—Chloe nailed the rhythm when she called it "blink-and-you-miss-him," but let's dig deeper into what that actually meant when Max was booking every featherweight in the house to hell and back. When Dustin Poirier stepped into that cage in Denver, he wasn’t just facing a guy with fast hands—he was staring down a Metronome 2.0, one that didn’t just count punches but calculated clean entry angles in real time. Stephens absorbing forty-plus eye-line disruptors isn’t something you shrug off as "volume"—it’s forty-plus geometry lessons delivered with concrete proof that geometry bleeds. The jab wasn’t a probe; it was a land survey—you mapped the space, then you filled it. And the sabbatical? A sabbatical doesn’t erase the fact that while the current camp was counting calendars, Holloway was already scripting the next semester from sunrise in Waikiki. That turnout at Mac’s Gym before UFC 206 wasn’t some fluke—it was a pilgrimage. Half the room could have been reffed by Wrexham kids who just wanted to borrow his timing, not borrow his belt. The framed shorts at Scotiabank? That wasn’t nostalgia—that was testimony from a fan who watched art class in real life and decided to hang the diploma on his wall. So sure, the champ today has a throne, but thrones don’t teach counter-movements while you’re still trying to figure out which foot goes forward. Whether that’s dominance or just a different style remains to be argued—but what isn’t arguable is that when Max Holloway stepped between the ropes between 2014 and 2017, he wasn’t just fighting. He was schooling the sport itself, one zip file of intent at a time.