Max Holloway perpetrated a mugging on Saturday night, beating Calvin Kattar black and blue over twenty-five dazzling minutes. While Kattar is a dangerous fighter who seemed to have the tools to give Holloway a handful, he was placed on the back foot almost immediately and was reduced to a supporting role in a Max Holloway character study through the third, fourth and fifth rounds. Set aside the ability to throw a stunning 750 strikes over five rounds, what stands out is that this deep into his career, and after having been supposedly ejected from the title picture, Holloway is still adding elements to his game and improving.

Holloway’s team has shown itself to be expert in preparing him for the specific quirks of an opponent, and this proved to be a case where those quirks actually played into Holloway’s best assets. Kattar has been prone, through his UFC run, to put up a high double forearms guard, or frame off the opponent with a long guard. This second one was a constant feature of the Zabit Magomedsharipov fight and allowed the Dagestani to jab and slip his way into inside position, then hit the body freely.

In this bout Holloway’s team seemed to have decided that if they could get Kattar to cover up early and keep him under fire, they could reduce his chances to time clean counters and to establish his own jab and right straight, and get more damage to stick to him as he slowed down and relied on cover ups over footwork more and more. As it turned out they were correct, but before Kattar’s feet slowed Holloway had some brinkmanship to do in the early going.

Not only did Holloway have to navigate Kattar’s corking right hand, but Kattar came out showing the low kick early as well. As we discussed in the latest Filthy Casual’s Guide, both Kattar and Holloway often choose to jab their way in, blading their stance and presenting their lead leg in the process. This makes them both liable to having their lead leg buckled inward with a good low kick. Kattar was able to do this on a pair of occasions early in round one, but Holloway so abruptly put Kattar on the back foot and forced him to cover up that it was a non-factor for the rest of the fight.

One weapon that Holloway used throughout the fight which seemed to answer two problems was to lead with a slappy left hook. Hooking off the jab is rare as rooster teeth in MMA, but it’s old hat for Holloway, now he’s leading with a left hook and shooting the jab up the inside of the opponent’s guard after he’s slapped it. More often, however, Holloway led with the left hook and followed with his classic right hand to the body, or a right straight and then another one-two.

This lead left hook somewhat mitigates the counter low kick. By stepping forward and out to the left Holloway avoids that straight step into a bladed stance that offers up the knee buckling counter. While the jab wasn’t often seen in the second Volkanovski fight, Holloway often entered with a slappy left hook and you will recall him landing the knockdown high kick after sliding in with the slapping left hook.

The second benefit of the slapping left hook was that it occupied Kattar’s right hand. His tendency to cover and absorb strikes on his guard meant that Holloway could use a throw-away left hook to occupy him before entering with the jab and initiating his usual combination punching. Rather than offer up the opportunity to cross counter over his jab, Holloway showed the left hook—a blow with far less chance of landing on the head of Kattar but which actually put him into a purely defensive position if he took the easy block.

Kattar’s counter right was the main threat he carried throughout the fight and he was able to land it well at several points, rattling Holloway’s composure once or twice. But for the most part, Holloway was razor sharp and was able to use Kattar’s counter punches as an opportunity to create further offence. Kattar was throwing his all into every counter and so Holloway was able to show him the shoulder feint or jab just short of the mark, draw and pull away from the right hand, and return with a combination as Kattar had thrown himself out of position. Some of the late fight’s most one sided sequences came as Kattar swung for a clutch counter, determined to turn the whole fight on its head, and then ate a torrent of offence in return.

Similarly, Holloway was able to use that classic—the jab-and-dip—to create openings to hammer the body.

And as the fight progressed, Holloway succeeded where Shane Burgos had struggled—he picked off Kattar’s jabs and followed them back. Each Kattar jab was a bayonet thrust but he lingered with it out, either out of bad habit or sometimes to adopt a long guard after his shot. Each time the jab came Holloway followed him back with a combination and made him suffer for it. Between clever offence to force the cover up, and direct punishment with counter combinations, Holloway was able to keep Kattar on the back foot for an astonishing amount of punishment.

While this was a match up between good jabbers, Kattar’s is a good jab in a vacuum. Granted, he has a gorgeous one-two, but much of Kattar’s game is just lancing fighters up one jab at a time. Max Holloway’s jab takes him places. It took him inside to the body throughout the fight. After numerous brutal body rips, it was a quick hook to the body off a jab that looked like no more than a wrist flick in the flow of the action that hurt Kattar in the fourth round and began one of the most brutal and prolonged flurries in the history of the UFC. Holloway’s jab would hide when he crossed his feet to set up the back kick, and would take him back to guard when he overextended on a right hand.

But most importantly, Holloway’s jab filled the gaps in the conversation. He was never quietly contemplating his next statement. Holloway isn’t throwing seven or eight strike combinations, but he has the same effect by throwing crisp two and three shot combinations back-to-back, and the jab and double jab carry him between them. Holloway’s jab creates movement, masks his feet, and keeps the fight going—the fact that it bruises and bloodies and blinds is a happy bonus.

It was within the context of a performance entirely fuelled by the jab that Holloway was able to score some of the nastiest right hand leads you will see in this sport. Kattar became so used to a jab or two jabs or three jabs beginning everything that when Holloway pitched his right completely naked he found Kattar a sitting duck. Most will have seen the clip of Holloway hitting a no-look right hand lead while shouting at the commentary booth, but rewind a little and you will see Holloway spread Kattar’s nose across his face a few minutes earlier. Holloway jabbed and threw the right straight to the body, then he paused and did it again. The third time, there was no jab and the piston right rammed into Kattar’s face completely unobstructed.

And while Max Holloway’s boxing generated most of the buzz (his mid-fight declaration that he’s the best boxer in the UFC helped that)”Muay Thai Max” was still present throughout. Holloway set up back kicks to the body off the jab, he landed a back kick as a counter, and he landed a back kick as Kattar circled along the fence. He spiked Kattar’s body with a short right knee when he had the Bostonian covering up with a high guard, and high kicks sent Kattar stumbling on two different occasions—once as Holloway weaved under a right hand! The most intriguing development in this bout was Holloway’s repeated use of a low line right side kick from an orthodox stance.

Holloway has been a fan of the low line side kick since Conor McGregor used it to irritate him eight years ago. He has often used it in fights where he has switched to southpaw but in this bout he was using it from an orthodox stance, kicking with the rear leg. I say “side kick” but it was as much a push kick with the toes turned in rather than out as you would on an oblique kick. It served a purpose in that it annoyed Kattar and push his hips back, but it seemed like a technique in its Research and Development phase. Holloway used it to shift into southpaw a couple of times but ultimately didn’t seem as though he wanted to be a southpaw for much of this fight.

While it is always a pleasure to watch Max Holloway build on ideas and create offence in the cage, this fight was extremely uncomfortable to watch at points. Kattar was game but seldom in it past round three and in the fourth round alone he absorbed almost 150 strikes of 200 thrown. Punch stats are not really an argument because neither the ref or the corner is there counting the blows, but it was very clear during that fourth round that Holloway was barely missing, Kattar was barely landing. At that stage the formal knockout becomes largely academic, seven hundred blows is going to stay with you unless your brain just doesn’t conform to everything we know about brains and trauma.

But to focus on the positive: Max Holloway was transcendent. As adaptive as Holloway is the one truth seems to be that you have to come up with an answer and come up with it quick. The men who have troubled him have put him on the back foot and shaken his confidence early, or broken off his combination work with low kicks, or grabbed a hold of him. Opponents who work at Holloway’s pace do not exist. If a fighter cannot out punch Holloway to the degree that he starts doubting his jawline—which is almost as impressive as his work rate—they might as well be fighting a fresh fighter every round.