Max Holloway

Former UFC featherweight champion Aleksander Volkanovski has spoken out regarding a possible fight between current belt holder Elijah Topuria and Max Holloway.

"I can come back and make our fight with Topuria end with my easy win. Also, I feel like Max can do the same. Topuria is a dangerous opponent, a great fighter, but I don't think he's as good as he thinks he is. Of course, he caught me off guard, so I can't say anything different. So I need to prove myself and I have everything I need to do that. I'm sure Max has a chance to win too, that's why I wanted to fight Topuria first," Volkanovski was quoted as saying by Fox Sports Australia.

Chael Sonnen, former UFC fighter and current commentator and analyst, had his say on how Max Holloway should handle his dispute with Elijah Topuria.

"You know what Max should say. I personally would like him to say the following: "Elijah, I'm ready to go down back down to welterweight. You said you'd fight Brian Ortega if I didn't put the BMF belt on the line. But I will go back to the featherweight division and offer that belt to Ortega." Let Brian Ortega make his decision publicly. What would he prefer, a title fight or the BMF belt? I don't think even the UFC realizes how much fighters value BMF status. So I'm not sure it will be that clear-cut for Ortega," MMA News quoted Sonnen as saying.

UFC featherweight champion Elijah Topuria has once again stated that he will only give former division leader Max Holloway a fight if he puts the BMF belt on the line.

"Right now it doesn't make sense for Holloway to fight me. He realizes I'm going to beat him, knows it deep down. If you are BMF and you have a chance to fight for the title, what are you going to do? You've got to fight. Max is telling me to sign a contract, do this, do that. But where are you? Put the belt on the line.

I told him I wasn't going to fight him unless he put the BMF belt on the line, and he told me, "The real BMF doesn't win the title that way." You want me to put that belt on and you're not going to do it. So if you lose, you still hold the BMF title. How does that work? It doesn't make sense," Bloody Elbow quoted him as saying.

UFC lightweight champion Sean O'Malley said he would like to see a fight between lightweight titleholder Islam Makhachev and former featherweight standout Max Holloway.

On April 13 at UFC 300 in Las Vegas, USA, Holloway made a foray into the lightweight division, knocking out Justin Gaethje in the final minute of the fight and picking up the symbolic BMF belt.

"What about the Max Holloway vs. Islam fight? We've never seen Max toughly outpointed by anyone. Gaethje was higher than Holloway in the rankings, but Max knocked him out. So a fight like that makes sense. It would come out wild!" - O'Malley stated on his YouTube channel.

Max Holloway, the former UFC featherweight champion, mocked the thrashtalk of Elijah Topuria, the organization's current featherweight champion.

"That's the kind of person he is. We exchanged Bible references on social media. Everybody was saying I won this duel 10-8. And then he threw me a whole paragraph. I didn't even read it, it was so long. I couldn't finish it, so I passed out. He's acting like a mean girlfriend. Even my wife doesn't text me like that. I started reading his sheet and I thought, fuck it. What's wrong with you? I had to check to see if the message was from my wife. What the hell?" - Holloway pronounced on Joe Rogan's podcast.