Max Holloway has already produced a career filled with highlight-reel victories but nothing may top his performance at UFC 300.
With time ticking away on a guaranteed unanimous decision victory, Holloway decided to throw caution to the wind as he pointed to the floor in the center of the octagon and invited Justin Gaethje to trade hands with him. Both fighters started launching bombs but it was Holloway who connected with a nuke that sent Gaethje crashing face-first to the canvas with just one second left on the clock.
The fight crowned Holloway as the new “BMF” champion but more importantly, he may have put his career on a whole new trajectory.
“When you think about we’re sitting in that room and we created the ‘BMF’ [title], tonight totally embodied what that belt was built for,” UFC CEO Dana White said about the fight. “There should be a picture of that fight in the f****** dictionary when you look up ‘BMF’. It was incredible.
“People always ask me what I do — I sell holy s*** moments for a living. That was the ultimate holy s*** moment of all time. If you were at home, if you were at a bar or if you were here live tonight, there’s no bigger holy s*** than that.”
— danawhite (@danawhite) April 14, 2024
White acknowledged that Holloway’s reputation was part of the reason he was selected as Gaethje’s opponent for the biggest UFC card in history.
The fact that Holloway could have cruised to victory in that final round but chose to just bite down on his mouthpiece and trade shots with Gaethje in the closing seconds told White everything he ever needed to know about the former featherweight champion.
“That’s why Max Holloway is beloved, and Gaethje,” White said. “How many times have you seen a fight where the guy wins, you know he’s winning, they click the 10-second thing, the guy puts his hands up and he’s just running around, moving around.
“He’s got the fight won and he’s in there with one of the most dangerous f****** fighters in the business and he says let’s do this and they both f****** oblige and they go in and just start [throwing bombs]. One second left and a knockout like that. That’s like movie s***.”
Needless to say, Holloway and Gaethje took home Fight of the Night, which came along with a $300,000 bonus for each of them (Holloway actually doubled up on bonuses by winning Performance of the Night as well). In fact, White says it’s going to be awfully hard to imagine anything tops that for the remainder of 2024.
“It’s the Fight of the Year,” White said. “If something beats that for Fight of the Year, holy s***, I don’t want to see the two guys involved in that fight at the end of the fight.”
White often says that the UFC doesn’t necessarily create superstars because if it was that easy, the company would have dozens on the roster already. Instead, there are specific moments in time that help some fighters transcend into the combat sports zeitgeist.
By almost every measure possible, Holloway was already a bankable star the UFC counted on to headline any number of massive shows all around the world. But what he did at UFC 300 may put Holloway into a whole new category shared by only a select few in the history of the sport.
“He was a star coming in here. He took himself to an entirely different level after tonight,” White said. “Tonight was a career-defining moment for a guy that has already accomplished so many great things. One of the greatest featherweights of all time, if not the greatest.
“He’s always talking about how he’s got the best hands in the UFC and then he does what he does tonight. F****** awesome. I can’t say enough good things about both of those guys and that fight.”
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