Former UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway looks ready to fight at light heavyweight.
Holloway has been training to add 10 pounds of weight for his upcoming bout against Justin Gaethje. But in his latest photo, it appears like Holloway may have added way much more weight than what he needs to. Commenting on an Instagram post showing him and former UFC heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic side-by-side and shirtless, Blessed claimed to be 205 pounds in the photo:
Max is scheduled to fight Justin Gaethje for the Baddest MF Title at UFC 300 on April 13th in Las Vegas. Because the champion Gaethje campaigns at lightweight, Holloway will move up one weight class to make the fight happen.
Blessed’s last bout against the Korean Zombie in Singapore last August 26th was fought at his natural weight class of 145 pounds. Moving up to Gaethje’s weight division, Holloway needs to bulk up to 155 pounds. Fighting at lightweight, however, isn’t anything new for Max as he began his pro-MMA career in the 155-pound division. Blessed was even the X-1 lightweight champion before moving to the UFC.
He’s since campaigned almost exclusively at featherweight but once moved up to 155 pounds to challenge Dustin Poirier for the then-vacant interim UFC lightweight championship in 2019. The bout against Gaethje will mark only the second time in Holloway’s UFC career that he will be fighting in the lightweight division.
Before his fight with Poirier, Holloway talked about his willingness to fight at any weight class. He even claimed that he was willing to meet ‘Thanos’ Daniel Cormier in a 205-pound bout. Although he sounded like he wasn’t too serious when he said that, it appears that Max may be willing to move up to as heavy as 205 because if he wasn’t bluffing, he looks good at 205 pounds.
Meanwhile, Miocic continues to train while patiently waiting for his title shot against current heavyweight champion Jon Jones. It can be recalled that Stipe was slated to meet Bones at UFC 295 last November. However, Jones suffered a pectoral injury while training and he had to pull out from the bout.
Miocic was subsequently pulled from the event too and an interim UFC heavyweight title bout between Tom Aspinall and Sergei Pavlovich replaced the Jones-Miocic bout at UFC 295. Aspinall won the temporary belt by knocking out Pavlovich.