Everyone wants the BMF belt, except BMF belt holder Max Holloway. What does “Blessed” want? He wants the UFC lightweight title.
Holloway was the UFC featherweight champion from 2017 to 2019 and seemed unstoppable until Alexander Volkanovski took the title off him and beat him back in three fights. And while Max now holds the BMF belt after a legendary win over Justin Gaethje at UFC 300, he knows that doesn’t really confer double champ status. Only the lightweight title will do that.
“I mean, the the BMF title is cool, you know?” he told Diana Belbita in a new interview. “I love it. It takes care of me. It does its job. But the undisputed title is the undisputed title, you know?”
“I keep telling everybody I want to be [a double champion], there’s very few people that got to be two division champ and I want to put my name. I know people are saying, ‘Oh, but your BMF title!’ It is what it is. That’s cool, but I want an undisputed title. I want to put my name alongside those legends.”
Despite already losing to Ilia Topuria at featherweight, Max Holloway is hopeful that he’ll get to fight him at lightweight, and a win over Charles Oliveira at UFC 326 is just the fight to put him back within striking distance of the Spanish superstar.
“I’m going to be in the UFC as long as I’m in title contention or have a title,” Holloway said. “You know, once I get over that hill where I’m just fighting fights to just fight fights, I don’t want to do it. My name is always in title contention right now. And that’s what keeps me going.”
An easier route to the lightweight title would see Justin Gaethje win a lightweight title unification match against Topuria over the summer, but Holloway would prefer to avenge his loss to Topuria.
“I’m not rooting for no one, may the best man win,” Holloway said of a Topuria vs. Gaethje fight. “But if I had my choice, I want to rematch Ilia100%. He did what he did, he’s the first man that did what he did to me, and no one else could. So I got to get that one back. You know me and me and Gaethje have history and I know Gaethje wants to get that one back. That would be a fun fight also. But hey, may the best man win and we will see.”
