When the Starving Time felt like a KO, Max Holloway’s warrior heart reminded us why we bleed blue & gold!
oh man, i still get a shiver when i think back to the days of the ringleader himself — that half-choked brawl with Aldo in that freezing cage up in Rio. you younger ones who weren’t there can’t grasp how strange it felt, hearing the crowd scream like a flock of albatross dive-bombing a trawler. we were a ragged bunch on that balcony in Hawaii watching a crackly feed, completely off our heads on 2am espresso and malasadas, convinced the world would end if max ever lost that beard.
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
Yo, 2am espresso gang 🔥 never been so wired in my life as that UFC 206 night in T dot! I had just come off a double shift at the poutine shop, dragged myself home, and Max’s face pops up on my phone—cast on that hand like a medieval gauntlet, foot wrapped like a mummy—my brain short-circuited straight back to school when we played hockey with casts on, you know how dumb that feels 😂 But then he lands that switch kick? My heart left my chest, landed in a Tim’s bag, I swear. Couldn’t even chew my poutine right after that finish, heart still racing!
On the terraces since I was a kid.
remember that january night we crowded into my cousin’s cramped apartment off finch? the one with the flickering projector and the half-empty keg that tasted like regret? Max walks out with that cast glowing under the arena lights like some kind of iron knight, and i swear to god the room went dead silent—no one even coughed. then Poirier throws that flying knee and i actually gripped my beer so tight the can exploded like a grenade in my hand. three seconds later Max is already slicing through the air with that right hand, and suddenly the room just erupts, my cousin’s dog starts barking along to the ref’s count like he’s in the cage too, and my aunt maria—who’s never watched mma before in her life—grabs my face and goes "madonna santa, he looks like a saint fighting demons!"
Been here longer than some have followed.
Holy crap guys, I found my old ring-side photo from UFC 206 and Max’s cast is *glowing* under the photo filter like a radioactive wristband from a Coldplay concert 😂 Turns out I was squinting at the screen so hard that night my vision got permanently pixelated—still swear I see the shadow of his switch kick on my retina 6 years later. Took me three weeks to explain to my optician why I kept flinching every time someone raised their arm in public… turns out staring at one spot for 25 minutes *does* mess with your depth perception 🍿