Max Holloway’s record reads as a guidebook of notable featherweights in MMA. If they ever made even a little noise by throwing fists, Holloway has probably fought them and there is a reasonably good chance he has already beaten them. By the time he earned his first shot at the UFC featherweight title, Holloway had fought almost every other prospect in the division. He deconstructed the great Jose Aldo twice, back-to-back and was crowned the king of the one hundred and forty five pounders in June 2017.

There were those who thought Holloway had suffered his ‘prospect losses’ early and was only now hitting his stride. He was showing new looks in every fight and now it would surely be a running up of the numbers in title defences for years to come. There were others who recognised that mileage is the inescapable rule on fighters and Holloway had fought a great deal just to get to the belt: it seemed like the peak might have already happened and Holloway could be nearing the point of diminishing returns. Max’s early 2019 trip to lightweight—where he was outgunned by old featherweight foe, Dustin Poirier—had fans thinking that reality might be sliding towards the worse outcome. Holloway returned to form in a conservative but convincing victory over long-toothed veteran, Frankie Edgar in July 2019 but as many were quick to point out: Edgar was old and had always been more of a technician than actually dangerous.

When Max Holloway met Alexander Volkanovski in December 2019, he found himself in one of the most spirited contests of his career. The bout was an exciting, technical back-and-forth. Brilliant gameplanning and adaptation carried Volkanovski to within reaching distance of the title and an absolute refusal to be outlanded or outpunched secured the belt for the Australian. While a rematch was assured, this weekend sees the two meet under the strangest of conditions at the UFC’s Fight Island debut on Yas Island. The stakes are incredibly high and the first fight could be reversed with small adjustments, yet almost everything about the preparation for both fighters has been less than ideal. Before we ask how Max Holloway can recapture the belt, let us first examine just how well Volkanovski got the measure of the featherweight great in their first meeting.

Killing Holloway’s Volume

Alexander Volkanovski and his camp realized that as a volume fighter Max Holloway takes control of fights as the differential in strikes landed becomes more obvious. Simply put: Volkanovski could not let Holloway land two or three punches for one in return. When you boil it down to “don’t get outscored” there are really only two options each time Holloway (or any great volume puncher) starts striking:

– You can try to meet him punch for punch and follow him out of the exchange, or

– You can try to cut him off at the first punch

The first option essentially boils down to out-hustling the opponent, and to Volkanovski’s credit he did a good deal of this. If his efforts to cut Holloway off didn’t pan out, he tried to outpunch Holloway and chase him out of punching range anyway. Volkanovski might be the somewhat bigger hitter but he kept pace with Holloway in a bout where each man threw over three hundred strikes, which is pretty remarkable when you remember the lacklustre third round of Volkanovski’s fight against Jose Aldo.

In terms of cutting a combination fighter off, there exist a number of options. One of the most obvious is Floyd Mayweather’s go-to in boxing: if you don’t like where you are as an exchange starts, duck the first punch and smother the other guy in the clinch. No one can keep punching properly when the target is stuck to their chest. In boxing and kickboxing this is a great way to reset—the referee will break the fighters apart and they get placed outside of striking range before action recommences. Of course in mixed martial arts there exist a great many offensive options from the clinch and, due to the rules respecting this, an even greater ability to kill time there. This wasn’t the meat of Volkanovski’s strategy in the first fight but he did use takedown attempts to enter clinches along the fence and hold for a time.

Another option is to cut an angle and leave the exchange before they can get going. If you are familiar with the careers of Nick and Nate Diaz you will know that this is their kryptonite and has led to anyone who circles out on them being labelled a coward and a runner, but also winning. Volkanovski used lateral footwork to stay away from the fence and get out before Holloway could start piling up the points.

But the new kid on the block and the weapon that earned Volkanovski the UFC featherweight title title is the low-low kick. This is an idea that we have explored quite a bit lately but one of the key reasons that the low-low kick or calf kick has come out of nowhere to dominate the MMA landscape is that MMA fighters were just beginning to explore the potential of boxing. To combination punch, you need one foot out in front of you. To move your head economically and be in position to counter punch, you need your feet staggered so that you can move your trunk from over one knee to over the other. And to make use of the jab—the most obviously underused weapon in MMA and something that fighters were finally using to make the difference—you need to bounce in off the back foot and put the lead foot down in front of you.

When Renato Moicano chopped up Calvin Kattar’s lead leg, Kattar tried on the fly to invent a way of boxing without putting his lead foot in range to be kicked. It didn’t work. The feet are the base of boxing and therefore you cannot box without, at some point, putting them in range to be punted. Throughout the twenty-five minutes of action, Volkanovski was able to cut Holloway’s three and four punch combinations off at the jab by laying into the lead leg each time Holloway began to plant it.

Volkanovski had further success by chopping and changing when he went to the outside with the low-low kick, and when he went to the inside with a traditional inside low kick. The step up inside low kick has been missing from MMA for a while but Zhang Weili and Volkanovski lean heavily on it in almost all of their fights.

Countering off the Low Kick

Max Holloway’s answer to Jose Aldo’s low kick was pretty simple: he stood with his knees bowed out like Wyatt Earp and waited. When Aldo kicked, he shot the right straight down the pipe and let Aldo know that this was the plan. Aldo low kicked a handful of times across their pair of fights. Part of that was likely the threat of the return and part of that was the fact that Aldo seems to barely care about anything but boxing in his modern incarnation. But the tactic is a very sound one generally: show the low kicker that every time he throws you intend to fire up the centre and to catch him on one foot.

As Holloway took the calf kick or inside low kick, recovered his balance, and tried to press forward to punish Volkanovski for it, Volkanovski would counter punch as he came back down onto both feet. This is something we examined in The Chaotic Footwork of Andy Ristie: using the low kick to draw a counter and throwing your own counters as you back out. Everything about Volkanovski’s kicking was exceptionally tight as he got his foot back to the mat and began sliding back or to the side every time Holloway came back at him. When Volkanovski was at his best he was low kicking, counter punching as Holloway tried to get one back, and then low kicking again as Holloway retreated from the exchange.

The greater range of the low-low kick also meant that Volkanovski could lead with it. A quick feint would get Holloway backing up, then the calf kick would knock his lead leg out of position and as he was getting back on guard Volkanovski would be rushing him with a left hook.

The Switch to Southpaw

It seemed for a minute like Volkanovski had Holloway stumped. Without establishing the jab or being allowed to work in combinations, Holloway was watching his belt leave his waist and drape itself over Volkanovski’s shoulder. An adaptable offence is Holloway’s greatest strength though—he shows something new and creative in every fight and it was his ability to switch stances that brought him back into this one. Midway through the second round, Holloway switched to southpaw and he didn’t go back to fighting orthodox until the fourth.

By switching to southpaw Holloway took away the easy power shot to his lead leg that was Volkanovski’s calf kick. Volkanovski’s teammate, Dan Hooker has made great use of the shin kick but those are about the worst connections you can ask for compared to the immediate effectiveness of the calf kick. Calf kicking off the lead leg against a southpaw is, of course, possible—Arnold Allen is terrific at it, and we examined the fantastic Ilias Ennahachi’s use of it last week—but it forced Volkanovski to take a step with his rear leg and telegraph a little and he didn’t seem entirely comfortable doing it. Instead Volkanovski would opt to step around the side to dig in good traditional outside low kicks. But it was very noticeable how much less effective Volkanovski was in this open stance position.

Just as in his fight against Anthony Pettis, Holloway went to work using the low line side kick to Volkanovski’s lead leg. Every second or third time he showed it, he would instead raise his knee and try to hop to outside foot position and line up his left straight. For the first few minutes it worked a treat and he caught Volkanovski clean with some stiff lefts.

Yet Holloway didn’t bring any other ideas. It was the low line side kick and hopping down the side, and that was it aside from the occasional horribly telegraphed step-through back kick. Worse yet, the low line side kicks were not knee-manglers that Volkanovski needed to respect. Holloway would hop forward, strike Volkanovski’s thigh, and Volkanovski’s stance often wouldn’t budge. This led to some bizarre exchanges where Holloway would get clattered with a counter punch while standing on Volkanovski’s lead leg like Captain Morgan.

Volkanovski’s adaptation to Holloway’s new stance was to use a shifting right hook. He went to this move so often that Holloway was easily reading it but was still struggling to stop it. Squaring his hips with a feint—or actually throwing a right straight to the midsection—Volkanovski would shift through to southpaw and throw a right hook into the open side.

Holloway found little joy without his best weapons but we did begin to see glimmers of “Classic Max” in the last two rounds. Through rounds one to three, Volkanovski had been disciplined regarding the fence. Any time he realized it was at his back he would angle out and circle off to avoid getting stuck on a flurry of Holloway blows, especially the corking body shots that Holloway can get off against opponents who lack the option of retreat. Midway through the fourth, however, Volkanovski was not nearly so mobile. His exits off his kicks weren’t as fast, and when he tried to burst in with a left hook or a shifting right hook, Holloway would sting him with a jab in the eye and escape without being struck.

Hypothetical Gameplans

If we haven’t stressed it enough already: the crux of this fight is that Holloway cannot box effectively when he can’t put his lead foot in first, and he was on the wrong end of the power match up in tit-for-tat trades. He hit on something in the southpaw stance that worked but was far too limited in his offence from there, focusing on a double attack that was partly gimmicky and largely nonthreatening.

For Holloway to bring his conditioning to lever he will need to get to the body early and often—which I imagine was part of the plan anyway and he simply wasn’t able to because his combinations were being broken off. Even when Volkanovski stuck around, big punches were coming back. Holloway’s kicking game has always been decent but he tends to engage in it on a whim: this is a fight where it seems like he needs it. In the southpaw vs orthodox match up power kicking off the back leg is a key weapon and yet Volkanovski was the only man engaging in it.

Set aside the idea of punting Volkanovski in the body clean and consider instead the benefits of throwing southpaw left kicks to the head and arm. Volkanovski is constantly taking his head off line to either side before moving in—high kicks are excellent for standing an opponent upright and making them a little easier to read. No one wants to lean into a swinging shin. Ross Pearson’s brilliant head movement disappeared for minutes at a time when the opponent showed him a high kick. More than that, high kicks and the threat of body kicks can make a fighter more reluctant to let his hands to leave home—especially smart when you consider how much Volkanovski was checking and trapping Holloway’s hands in the moments he stood still. And of course there is the chance that you fracture a forearm or wrist when the opponent blocks your round kicks.

But even forgetting all of that—because Max isn’t a great power kicker and there isn’t much reason to believe he spent the time between fights making a Lumpinee Khalil Rountree transformation—kicking gets you in. The City Kickboxing team have been punishing fighters for trying to apply boxing well by taking out the lead leg, especially when the opponent sets his weight to jab. In the time between jotting down the ideas for this article and actually writing it, Dustin Poirier fought Dan Hooker and lo and behold, he got in through Hooker’s low kicking range with middle kicks. He threw the kick, hit the body or the arm, and fell in with punches.

It is like a big, exaggerated step that happens to clang off the opponent. Holloway isn’t the same banger that Poirier is, but he could make more use of his length over Volkanovski by lancing him with straight kicks to the body and falling in behind them. This is something that Holloway has done before to change stance in his fights with Anthony Pettis and Cub Swanson. Tony Ferguson regularly uses front snap kicks to the body to shift in with a jab—something we covered in the Filthy Casual’s Guide to Tony Ferguson—and just the other week Sean O’Malley used front kicks to shift in on Eddie Wineland. If that’s a little too subtle, Bas Rutten made a career out of leaping into a rear leg push kick—lifting his opponent out of their stance and driving them towards the ropes—then falling in swinging.

If that is too risky with Volkanovski’s hitting power in close range, Holloway could use the front kick and rear leg round kick to fall in on the double collar tie. If you need proof that this works in MMA you only need to watch the first fight where it was Volkanovski kicking and falling into the double collar tie despite being the shorter fighter. As the taller fighter, Holloway could be using the double collar tie to stifle Volkanovski’s offence and threaten with knees. Finally there is the Rob Whittaker option of just using single, straight shot front kicks to wind and score points. Whittaker did this against Yoel Romero to avoid being knee-capped with low line side kicks as he stepped in, and each time he threw one of these kicks he knew he had hit Romero hard enough that a return was impossible.

There are two ways Holloway can correct his striking performance in the rematch: improve his accuracy and outpace Volkanovski so that he can impose his usual game, or make his shots matter more. Volkanovski met him strike for strike and clearly outpunched him in the first match but the fading in the later rounds was encouraging. If Holloway wants to score with more volume off the bat, moving towards the cage and cutting it with round kicks to the body in order to enter with strikes is a great shout until Volkanovski is standing still long enough to start putting together punching combinations without entering behind the kick.

In terms of making blows count for more: Volkanovski was often rushing to close the distance. He would keep his hands high and his chin down and he would come in on a straight line as quickly as possible. Holloway timed jabs and occasionally framed on Volkanovski’s face to try and throw his rear hand, but he didn’t do much damage to Volkanovski or lessen his confidence. Holloway attempted one intercepting knee in the fight and skewered Volkanovski’s liver as Volkanovski lunged in with a high guard. Moreover, he escaped without eating a return or getting tied up. And tellingly, Volkanovski did nothing but feint for the next ten or fifteen seconds, and even then only threw a low low kick in order to back off and circle the cage again—the subtle signs of a smart fighter who has been winded. Consistent use of the intercepting knee would be a perfect response to the rapid straight line charges that Volkanovski relied on so heavily in the open stance match up when Holloway went southpaw.

By the fifth round Holloway had moved away from the drop away and counter jab, and onto the counter uppercut. Even when he connected he never managed to score the kind of connection to hurt Volkanovski. Volkanovski’s bursts lead with his forehead and forearms, this would be the perfect place to make use of elbows. As intercepting blows they take most of their pop from the opponent lunging onto a solid structure. They can score a quick knockout, hurt an opponent over a short distance and very easily open cuts which bleed into the eyes and in turn allow the volume fighter to begin scoring his straight blows with greater ease.

In our hypothetical gamplan, Holloway would go forward trying to press Volkanovski towards the fence, enter with kicks and start punching with special emphasis on getting to the body early and often. Then every second or third attempt would be followed by a brief backing off and releasing of pressure, allowing Volkanovski to lead and attempting to score a stiff intercepting counter to open a cut or wind Volkanovski and follow up even more effectively on the lead.

If nothing changes on Holloway’s part, you cannot ask for much more from Volkanovski. There was perhaps a minute or two of the first fight where Holloway actually looked like himself and that was entirely Volkanovski’s doing. The only way you are likely to see Holloway’s “old self” is if Volkanovski forgets what he did in the first fight or Holloway makes significant changes.

Should Holloway come out kicking more actively, Volkanovski might be best served to catch kicks or step up inside, either way acquiring the clinch. While he wasn’t able to hold Holloway to the fence for long in their first fight it didn’t seem like he made a tremendous effort to do so. Volkanovski has done some lovely striking on the break as his opponent fights off the fence—his bout with Hirota is a great example. Pressing Holloway to the fence and running the clock off Holloway’s kicks would not only smother the combination striking that is supposed to follow the kick, but make Holloway second guess a kicking-heavy strategy. When Holloway exerts himself to circle off the fence, Volkanovski can look for the shifting right hook or even the back elbow as he did against Hirota.

The roles have been completely reversed from the first fight. Where we went into that one wondering just how Volkanovski could put a stop to Holloway’s usual antics, now we are wondering just what Holloway can pull out of his toolbox to contend with Volkanovski. Does this bout cement the foundations of another great champion’s reign, or only constitute the second act of a three fight series?