Kevin Holland is known affectionately as ‘big mouth' for good reason. The now UFC welterweight has run into problems on social media with everyone in his former division blocking him.
Kevin Holland likes to DM his opponents on Instagram and talk trash to them. It appears like the UFC middleweights had enough of it.
“[Marvin] Vettori blocked me. He couldn’t take the banter,” Holland said with a laugh on Wednesday’s episode of The MMA Hour.
“Paulo Costa blocked me too. So that’s probably why I went to 170. All the guys at ‘85 blocked me, so I was like, ‘Fuck it, I’m just going to of go to 170.’ I need people to pick on.”
Getting blocked by everyone on Instagram wasn't the only motivation for the UFC fighter. He had planned to move to welterweight for a long time.
“Right before I fought Brendan Allen, I was talking about doing that and then going down to 170,” Holland said. “Then I lost to Brendan Allen and I was like, ‘Alright, I’m going to stay at ‘85, try and get that back, and then eventually go to 170.’ So 170 has been in the game plan for a long time. When I was a local fighter, I used to have a saying: ‘You want to want to die hungry or you want to die starving?’ Back then I didn’t know how to cut weight, so it was just a bunch of not eating, trying to make weight, right? You get to the UFC, you realize these are big guys cutting weight, everybody knows how to cut weight the proper way.
“As I look around, I see all the 170 guys — they’re 190 pounds, they’re 200 pounds. They’re all heavier than me. I’m talking to Gilbert Burns in the lobby before one of the events and he’s like, ‘Man, I cut more weight than you. I’m bigger than you and I fight at 170.’ Dude used to fight at ‘55. James Vick, longtime training partner, used to fight at ‘55. He always told me I should go back to ‘70. I had a bad cut at ‘70 one time and I just didn’t want to do it anymore. So now that we’ve got the nutritionists and stuff like that, I went to the UFC PI, they said I was pretty green to go to 170 — I was like, yeah, let’s give it a shot. Why not?”
Kevin Holland currently has his UFC welterweight debut set with a fight against Alex Oliveira at UFC 272 in March. The fight is expected to be a very exciting one between two strikers.
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